By Mar-Vic Cagurangan
Variety News Staff

TOPLINE Manpower Services, one of the biggest recruitment agencies in Manila, has been swamped with applications from Filipino workers seeking to pick up the construction jobs generated by a military buildup on Guam.
Lulu Ocampo, president of Topline, said the number of workers that Topline sent to Guam in 2006 increased by 100 percent since 2004.
Ocampo said Topline has been sending construction workers to more than 30 contractors on Guam since 1990. During peak season, she said, the agency sends an average of 300 workers a year.
“The demand for construction workers on Guam is seasonal. There was no demand between 1998 and 2000,” Ocampo said, referring to the period when the Pentagon reduced the number of bases on island.
The manpower demand began to pick up from 2003 to 2004, Ocampo said.
Guam is facing an acute shortage of construction workers. The government of Guam and the construction industry have jointly set up programs to train local residents, but there are not too many takers.
The number of workers that manpower agencies can send to Guam or other U.S. destinations depends on the annual visa quota imposed by the Immigration and Naturalization Services.
But Ocampo expects the number of workers deployed to further go up this year following the enactment of a congressional bill that allows H2 workers to work for certain projects inside military bases on Guam.
“Most companies prefer H2 workers because foreign workers are more likely to stay and commit to the jobs until the project is finished,” Ocampo said.
“The Philippines has a big pool of skilled workers, engineers, architects and electricians. But I am very careful when interviewing applicants to make sure that we send only the qualified ones,” Ocampo said.
“I have a pre-screening staff composed of engineers who screen each application before the applicants get the chance to meet their prospective employers,” Ocampo added.