What are laid off workers in Philippine doing last few months

[user555 195]

3 hours ago, flicks1998 said:

Filipinos can sometimes get by with relatively Low electric bills in our minds but electricity can easily take 20-30% of a monthly salary.  I’ve seen others with very tiny electric bills but they are only running one light and a fan each month as well. 
 

we would do the departure services for expats when leaving the country and this would involve assisting with last month utility bills. It was extremely common For these expats to have electric bills in the $500 to $3800 a month range with the average around $1700 a month or so. 

What is the electricity bill of the locals? I am living in Manila in a condo and run the AC every night for 8 hours. Our electricity bill averages under 3,000 pesos a month (2,900 this month which is around $60). That means a Filipino family is making 9,000 pesos a month. Meralco Electric company charges about 9 pesos (around 19 cents) per kWh. We have an AC, water heater in the shower, two laptops, TV, washing machine, fan, microwave, and refrigerator. 

Did the expats in the departure service have a house? Did they run the AC 24/7? An electricity bill you saw was $3,800 per month? 186,000 pesos for 1 month of electricity? Are you sure this wasn't for a business? I don't see how a house could use up that much. 

Edited August 6, 2020 by user555

[flicks1998 1,044]

1 hour ago, user555 said:

What is the electricity bill of the locals? I am living in Manila in a condo and run the AC every night for 8 hours. Our electricity bill averages under 3,000 pesos a month (2,900 this month which is around $60). That means a Filipino family is making 9,000 pesos a month. Meralco Electric company charges about 9 pesos (around 19 cents) per kWh. We have an AC, water heater in the shower, two laptops, TV, washing machine, fan, microwave, and refrigerator. 

Did the expats in the departure service have a house? Did they run the AC 24/7? An electricity bill you saw was $3,800 per month? 186,000 pesos for 1 month of electricity? Are you sure this wasn't for a business? I don't see how a house could use up that much. 

The upper end costs are for expats who stayed in houses. The predominant villages they would stay in was Forbes, Dasma, Ayala Alabang, and to a smaller extent Bel Air etc. Most had utility allowances so I’m sure they didn’t conserve energy. On average those homes will have between 18-22 Ac units.  Their housing allowances they were given (not including the utility allowance) was between 250k to 1 million pesos a month. Somewhere in this range whereas the 250k in Forbes and dasma will get you an old house With terrible windows and other maintenance issues. In fact I don’t think 250k will get you a rental house in Forbes now. It could be 350k pre-COVID. 
 

for condos the older ones tend to be larger then the newly built but have terrible insulation. The oldest and first condos in BGC were on the west side. pacific plaza towers, Essena and regent parkway. Size of the condos range from 268 sqm to 300 sqm. PPT had centralised air so naturally higher electric costs. These were 3 bedroom units and right at 300 sqm. Essena used to have central air but went to individual Room ac inverters which help cut cost but each landlord of their unit paid about $25000 to have this done. They had no choice as it was voted on at an association meeting but electricity would be cut 40%, so they said. Electric in just these units ranges around 45k to 140k or so. Some expats were less some were more. We saw the bills as we paid them for some of the expats each month. I could go on with the other condos etc in Manila but wrong forum

 

Salary we tended to pay on the lower side and I tried hard to get this raised so we could get better candidates but to no avail. One reason why I left as well. Starting salary for our Consultants was 13.5k php per month up to maybe 15k but that was rare. That’s gross salary. Then you take out income taxes which are ridiculously high for the region (and you get nothing in return), plus some companies required the person pays for all medical tests, and other ids, monthly deductions for sss, Pag-ibig, Phil health etc) and a good chunk of money is gone. I would say net salary for a month based on that would be around 9k or so minus for unpaid absences and there is not much left. Some would rent a room which was between 3-5k in makati (5k had aircon sometimes) and others stayed with family but almost all families lived on the outskirts. Antipolo, Valenzuela, Calamba, las pinas, bulucan etc. Now you see why so many leave the country.  These were 1.5 to 2.5 hour commutes one way each day. 
 

some of our clients were chevron, Philipp Morris, hsbc, coke etc etc etc and they would pay their HR people around 30k to 50k a month. But that salary bracket your getting really close to the TOP tax bracket of 33-35%. It’s a progressive tax so the real amount is a little lower but you still hit high brackets very quickly. A lot of these people I met would have a decent shared condo, sometimes a car which was almost a mistake, etc. They would use aircon and they would have the 2.5k to 5k a month electric bills on average. But......these jobs are scarce. The lower wage jobs prevailed. We had terrible retention and if I had any superstars they left in 6 months usually overseas. I got tired of this and as I said one reason I had enough as well. 
 

I could go on and on and on but electricity costs taking an enormous chunk of salary out of the monthly pay. Also besides that and another issue, is you can’t compare the US to the PI due to the ridiculously Low salaries. Imagine having 3000 or less a month for food. It’s very very common. That’s why literally everyone in the office is borrowing money from each other. Month after month.  I am extremely critical of the Philippines but I do have some sympathy when you see hard working “educated” Filipinos struggle for the basics. The ones that you do see at Starbucks or spending lots of cash are either living in a family who all members work and they pool their money, or they have maxed out their credit cards which is very common, or more than likely they have an overseas life line. 
 

it’s the wrong board for all this, but once you get involved in the workforce and see how f$cked up it is, many things start to make sense. I don’t blame a single one of them wanting out. It also made me go from loving the Philippines to practically despising so many things. 
 

I don’t remember the exact numbers but something like 90% of the wealth in the country is controlled by the TOP 10-12 or so families. It’s something like this but I don’t remember the exact details. 

[jameyj 73]

On 8/4/2020 at 1:41 PM, RO_AH said:

In my wife area they were giving some assistance in the first few months but it seems to have really fallen off. The interviewers came and asked:

Do you have a TV?

Do you have a computer?

Do you have air con?

Several other questions, but that was the type of questioning. So yeah, she didn't qualify.

Yes, all excellent questions by the wise PH authorities, knowing full well the nutritional value of eating such devices.....

 

Those are the few things that will help keep people sane during this forced isolation.  

[RO_AH 1,615]

On 8/5/2020 at 2:19 PM, flicks1998 said:

Filipinos can sometimes get by with relatively Low electric bills in our minds but electricity can easily take 20-30% of a monthly salary.  I’ve seen others with very tiny electric bills but they are only running one light and a fan each month as well. 
 

we would do the departure services for expats when leaving the country and this would involve assisting with last month utility bills. It was extremely common For these expats to have electric bills in the $500 to $3800 a month range with the average around $1700 a month or so. 

I think you missed my point. Someone was saying that electric prices are higher in the Philippines than in the USA. I will guarantee you I pay much more per Kwh than anyone in the Philippines.

[RO_AH 1,615]

10 hours ago, jameyj said:

Yes, all excellent questions by the wise PH authorities, knowing full well the nutritional value of eating such devices.....

 

Those are the few things that will help keep people sane during this forced isolation.  

I think it was more of a matter of, if you have those things you are rich, so no help for you. lol

[flicks1998 1,044]

5 hours ago, RO_AH said:

I think you missed my point. Someone was saying that electric prices are higher in the Philippines than in the USA. I will guarantee you I pay much more per Kwh than anyone in the Philippines.

And I guarantee you pay more for almost everything else in the US than anyone in the Philippines.  The basis of comparing kwh between countries is useless, there is no meaning to it unless context is added.  

 

Iif you tell people in the Philippines you pay more per kwh of electricity, it will completely fall on deaf ears.  Practically everything is more expensive in the US.  Are your electric bills taking 40% of your monthly salary?  "Expensive" and "higher" is relative.  If you have double the electric bills you probably have 15 to 100 times the monthly salary.  Do your electric bills force you to decide between eating 3 meals a day or 2?  Do your electric bills take so much of your monthly salary, that you unplug the TV when not in use, the refrigerator when not in use, and everything else that takes an electric current.  

 

So are you REALLY paying more than anyone in the Philippines?  Of course not.  Your electric bill alone would eat up more than 100% of their average salary.  To draw an apples to apples comparison, lets increase your electric bill in Hawaii to 30-40% of your monthly salary and we can now have a better comparison.   Or better yet, go to Manila, get paid in pesos, and then tell us who has "higher" electricity costs.