Repairmen from central Philippines keep Prague-based firm warm
Panoramic view of Prague Castle - click to enlarge
by JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO
OFW Journalism Consortium
PRAGUE (PRAHA), Czech Republic — FROSTY weather and a global crisis failed to chill a multinational company here since acting as reliable recruiter and benevolent employer to foreign workers from central Philippines.
Teleplan Prague s.r.o.’s gaming business unit president Roberto Tongo calls it “comfortable employer’s services,” or providing comfort to workers.
“They [Filipino workers in Teleplan] are people who should be treated well, not to be exploited,” Tongo said.
Teleplan International SRO, the world’s fourth biggest after-sales technology services firm, invested in Filipino migrant workers in 2008, when the world’s largest consumer electronics market, the United States, declared a recession.
Since 2008, when the first batch of workers was recruited from Roxas City, Capiz and Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, Tongo said Teleplan rolled out an almost red-carpet treatment.
The company provided visa assistance services, airport arrival assistance, free accommodations, official and personal transportation expenses while in the Czech Republic, and free meals inside the workplace.
Coupled with monthly minimum salaries of CZK (Czech Koruna) 8,000 or P20,000 (CZK 1 = P2.50), a 50-percent performance bonus and overtime pay, Filipino workers here only need to spend for their food outside of work, and to remit money to families in the Philippines through payroll accounts with Raiffeisenbank.
None of the Filipino workers of Teleplan Prague were laid off, while their fellow Filipino workers suffered disenfranchisement in other host countries like Taiwan because of the crisis.
It’s the brightest 2009 story about Filipinos here, said Philippine Ambassador to the Czech Republic Regina Irene Sarmiento.
Teleplan-Prague workers from the Philippines account for more than half (53.6 percent) of the estimated total 352 Filipinos here.
The Filipinos in Teleplan’s gaming unit already make up 35 percent of the Prague branch’s entire workforce of 540, as well as 14 percent of Teleplan’s worldwide workforce of 1,310 for the consumer electronics segment.
Teleplan’s 21 offices in 12 countries worldwide offer repair and logistics services for computers, communication gadgets, and consumer electronics products.
Majority of the service operations of Teleplan Prague’s factory in Ricany-Jazlovice town (20 kms. from the center of Prague) are for the gaming products, while also servicing notebooks, personal navigation devices, and set top boxes.
For as long as these Filipino workers remain productive performers in the workplace, Teleplan Prague’s can weather the chill of Europe’s own economic crisis, Tongo said.
Efficiency
THE US-born Tongo told the OFW Journalism Consortium he’s grateful to the hard work of the 189 Filipino workers, which he credits for efficiency in the workplace.
It was the goal of efficiency that Tongo got the nod of Teleplan International’s management board in The Netherlands to recruit Filipino workers for Prague.
Upon his arrival in Prague in early 2008, Tongo said he noticed high worker turnover rates, which led to poor provision of service to customers.
The Prague office also had to cope with language barriers. Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech, Vietnamese and Ukranian workers had difficulty understanding each other and, more importantly, the work instructions in repairing Xbox units, the company’s main business in this part of Europe.
Meanwhile, the crisis also provided an opportunity for their business to grow.
Teleplan Prague saw a deluge of minor repair requests across Europe last year —3,000 a day, as Tongo claims— to repair broken Microsoft Xbox gaming consoles.
“Cash-strapped owners of broken Xboxes, Nintendo players, and PlayStation [consoles],” Tongo told the OFW Journalism Consortium, “hold on to their products.”
“Owners can’t buy new products, so they resorted to repairs and called us (Teleplan).”
The crisis, thus, became “beneficial” to Teleplan Prague, said Tongo.
“The economic crisis didn’t seem to have the expected impact on our volume (of service repair requests)”.
Gaming repair services, which are served in Teleplan’s offices in Prague, Havant, United Kingdom, and Sydney, Australia, are under Teleplan’s Consumer Electronics segment together with video communication services and imaging services.
But the idea to recruit from the Southern Philippine provinces came from his wife Juvy, a native of Roxas City.
Tongo said she knew a lot of qualified but jobless residents there and in nearby Bacolod City.
An initial batch of 20 workers arrived in Prague in December 2008, and Tongo said they are still recruiting more Filipinos.
| Negros Occidental province |
| Temporary contract workers | 11,613 (year 2007) |
| | 6,115 (year 2007) |
| | 5,498 (year 2007) |
| Permanent residents | 14,039 (from 1988 to 2007) |
| Filipino spouses and other partners of foreign nationals | 3,520 (from 1989 to 2007) |
| Households with migrant dependents | 24,264 (year 2000) |
| Estimated remittances | PhP4,044,849,917 (year 2006) |
| Source: Government data found in http://almanac.ofwphilanthropy.org |
| Capiz province |
| Temporary contract workers | 3,329 (year 2007) |
| | 1,812 (year 2007) |
| | 1,517 (year 2007) |
| Permanent residents | 2,608 (from 1988 to 2007) |
| Filipino spouses and other partners of foreign nationals | 497 (from 1989 to 2007) |
| Households with migrant dependents | 8,987 (year 2000) |
| Estimated remittances | PhP2,032,804,887 (year 2006) |
| Source: Government data found in http://almanac.ofwphilanthropy.org |
Comfort
TONGO admits he’s not aware of how his workers socialize outside Teleplan.
Still, he meets some of them every Sunday during noontime English Masses at The Parish of the Sto. Niño in downtown Prague.
Social networking sites, nonetheless, show smiling faces of some of the Filipino workers.
“Ailyn,” for one, shows a photo with 15 friends of hers sharing a Filipino meal, complete with rice.
The 29-year-old Teleplan worker is a native of Ilog, Bacolod City.
Roxas City native “Andrew,” 45, had photos of him and co-workers fetched at Schiphol airport. Another shows him at a popular Czech mountain ski resort in Spindleruv Mlyn town (or spindler’s mill, a 170 km., two-hour drive from Prague). The photo was dated October 23, 2009.
“Yehey! Ari na ko sa Prague! Europe man ni kuno? [Yipee! I am now in Prague! Is this in Europe?],” his August 21, 2009 posting wrote, notably as a new arrival in the Czech Republic.
Tongo admitted he worried that the crisis would force the company to cut costs. Eventually, some Filipinos working in various technical and administrative jobs at Teleplan Prague may have to pack up and go home.
Based on the company’s 2009 third quarter financial report, it also felt the chilling effect of the global crisis.
Nine-month figures year-on-year, in the company’s interim third quarter report posted on its website, saw Teleplan International’s revenue shrink by five percent to 215.816 million euro last year from 227.402 million euro in 2008.
Surprisingly, the workers are still there, proving Tongo’s belief that when workers are provided comfort, they become productive at work and help the company fight the cold hand of an unwieldy market. OFW Journalism Consortium
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