Poverty pushes people to take on odd jobs just in order to earn a living. Many of our educated population would swallow shamefulness if only to feed the hunger of family. It is really ironic that education is not a sure key to gainful employment. The bad joke about college graduation being the gateway to the world of unemployment is real. Jobs are scarce both in government and the private sector. The gap between the number graduating from college and the job opportunities is constantly increasing by the year and there simply are no signs it would narrow down in time.
The situation is aggravated by the mismatch between course offerings in schools and job requirements in workplaces. Often, the graduate that is hired has still to undergo trainings to make him competent. The sadder reality is that graduates of academic degrees would need to shift to vocational and technical training just to be fit for employment. Our degree holders would go down with the employment fashion of being service crews in call centers or becoming caregivers to foreign races.
We had been hit hard with the craze to career caregiving and nursing. The first is new trend while the other had been a regular job in demand abroad. We do not care about caregiving being a mere downgrading of nursing. We do not care that foreign employers may just be gypping our gullible impoverished people into taking a job that requires nursing skills but would fall cheaper because it was named purposely to appear cheaper. We already had caregivers even before its famousness but they wore the tag domestic helpers. These hands had already been providing care to foreign people long before caregivers became a byword of those dreaming to work abroad.
But our workers serving as domestic helpers on foreign shores were deemed lacking in some skills on health and medical care to the sick and aging people they serve. Even if they are caring enough and are doing household services well, the need for training on health and medical care became imperative. The situation triggered the proliferation of businesses on caregiver training. Those wanting jobs abroad immediately flooded these training schools that offer packages of job placements after training.
Poverty is the great pusher to this anomalous situation where our people would sacrifice leaving family to care for others with pay. Certainly, there are minor children and aging parents who need care and attention that must be left uncared and unattended by the kin who need to care for others for fee so that family and kin left at home may live no more in the excruciating pain of hunger or the grinding knead of poverty.
In its common acceptation, giving is a generous act that is free. The vocation now in demand may have been given a misnomer in the strict sense. But rendering service to others deserves commensurate compensation. No one would foolishly take a long journey away from family and home purely as an act of love, sacrifice and devotion. But the calling of this vocation is not material to its true essence. It is a noble job for the jobless population of this nation that goes overseas to earn for the family while caring for others.
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