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A migrant worker's final homecoming


A Filipina, Lorie Matulay (below, right),54, from Mountain Province, Philippines, has made it on the cover of Dutch Volkskrant magazine. The magazine devoted 6 pages on her story as an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) cleaning houses in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Now, she finally retires and gets to go home for good.
                                                                        (Photo from Volkskrant magazine)
Matulay is one of the estimated 8 to 11 million migrant Filipinos that are scattered around 214 countries worldwide, according to the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, whose remittances have reached US$18.76 billion or about 10% of the GDP in 2010. By end of 2011, it was expected to reach $23 billion, making the Philippines the fourth largest remittance-receiving country after India, China and Mexico, says the Philippines' GMA News Online.

Many families in the Philippines rely heavily on remittances from their relative abroad.

Matulay is just among the few who choose to come back after working some time in other countries. And for every OFW who retires, the number of going abroad is ten-fold.

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