Who Should Be Accounted For?

Who Should Be Accounted For?

by Jewel Sumayo

                     

                 We owe so much to the environment, from the food that we eat up to the littlest thing that we use in our daily lives. But what is happening right now is that we humans tends to depend too much on the environment that little by little we are destroying its natural beauty. As the environment being destroyed we face the different consequences such as climate change and the degradation of non-renewable resources. What is so special about the non-renewable resources if you may ask? It is important for us because we use it to obtain energy that we can use for our everyday lives. As for the climate change we experience changes in the weather that we humans are not used to in a sudden change, that it affects our environment as well. 

                 People depends on the environment too much, I believe that being consumers we tend to buy things too much even if we really do not need too much of those things. Manufacturers (or let us say or assume the capitalists) produces these products to make it available to the market and so the people can buy it or make it available to the people. People then buy these products that are useful for them for everyday use, however there are products that seems are not so useful but still the manufacturers produces it. Manufacturers  uses raw materials in order to come up with their products, raw materials that are coming from Mother Nature. Making the idea of consumerism might sound bad in this blog, but what we need is to be enlightened on the actions that we are making.

                 The degradation of the environment will affect us soon and in an instant, there are people who believes that the environment can survive but the people will not survive without the environment. We need to protect the environment and make it sustainable so we can assure that we will have an assured future for the next generation. We need to stop polluting the environment in order for us to make it more sustainable. The manufacturers should also have corporate social responsibilities with the products that they are producing.  We should not lose hope, what we really need is to act fast in order for us to save Mother Earth. So who is really accounted for what is happening with the environment? All of us will be guilty for sure with doing this to the environment, but it is not yet late to do anything in order to save our beloved Mother Earth. 

Crossing The International Borders Is it Good or Bad?

Crossing The International Borders Is it Good or Bad?

(image from: http://www.pinoy-ofw.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/ofw-arrivals1.jpg)

         
         Because of the increasing number in the population of the different countries in this globalizing world we tend to have an increasing number as well of  people who can be part of the labor force. However not all countries can accommodate a large group of labor force by generating more jobs to be available for them sometimes people who are skilled enough or also known as "the professionals" wanted to earn more that is why they try their luck in working to the foreign lands. This is issue is not new in the Philippine context, for example when the 2000s entered there is a dire need for nurses in some countries such as Canada and United Kingdom and lots of young Filipinos who are that time entering the college level pursued the degree in Nursing. 

        During that time it was definitely a good choice to pursue the Nursing career path because of the different job offerings available in different countries. However the downside of this issue is that all of our nurses (the good ones) here in the Philippines are leaving the country with greener and better pastures and all of the young people still continue to pursue Nursing in college. I forgot also to mention that there are also cases that Filipino doctors (yes you read it right they are already licensed medical doctors) who decided to pursue Nursing,and be a licensed nurse and then fly to the other countries just to become a nurse leaving their prestigious medical doctor field.

The successful batch  Filipino Nursing licensee exam passers during their oath-taking ceremony

(image from: http://www.pinoy-ofw.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/filipino-nurses.jpg)

          Nursing became a "booming" course during that time when I was in high school, and to tell you I even considered to take the Nursing degree when I was filling up my University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT) back in 2008, good thing is that I did not pass the entrance exam for that course, because during 2010 there are already news that Canada and United Kingdom are not recruiting anymore nurses from other countries and they decided to fill these posts with their own nurses instead, and there are also news that Filipino nurses from abroad are starting to be sent back here in the Philippines. Thank God that I was not able to pursue the nursing career, however I sort of feel down for those people who are taking or took nursing because of the hope of earning more if they will cross to other countries. Right now most of the nursing graduates are currently employed in different forms of Business Process Outsourcing (BPOs) companies such as various call center agencies. But I am not saying that all graduates of Nursing are most likely to be seen in BPOs of course there are also nursing graduates who pursue medical school and the nursing track but instead they serve for the Filipinos here in the Philippines. 

         With that example can I say that there are pros and cons when it comes with the issue of crossing the international borders because of labor? Yes indeed there are a lot of pros and cons with this issue, pros such as Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) sending back remittances that could help the economy of the Philippines in terms of the gross national product (GNP). But there are also cons such as like what I said earlier that, we lost professional and skilled workers here in the country and it would be better if we were the ones who benefit from their skills and it would be practically make the economy of the Philippines better. To end my blog, I will still leave to my readers on what do they think about this topic, after all I respect other people's opinion with this matter.