Hiring a tradesman in the Philippines

The rough-in of plumbing should've started 2 weeks ago, the same time as the electrical rough in, but it's hard to find a reliable plumber. I've searched all over - from my relatives to the plumber of a friend of a friend, to Facebook! The simple thing of hiring a plumber is so stressful.

The culture in the Philippines is quite unique when it comes to hiring a tradesman. Here in Australia, when we need a plumber or a person to fix something at home, we just call them up or look their names from truelocal.com.au. We are more or less assured that the person can do the job, and do it well. Otherwise, we can always call Fair Trading to complain if the tradesman is a scam or did a very crappy job.

In the Philippines, we always look for a tradesman referred by a relative or by a friend, or by a neighbor, as long as somebody we know gave the referral. The tradesman should be a 'kakilala' before we can even trust them that they can do the job and not run away with the money. It's just the way it is, there's no system to certify trade skills or perhaps there's one but I'm not aware of it. There's no reference to check if the tradesman can really do the job and there are a lot of cases where the tradesman runaway with the money without doing the job. It's worth to ask around even if it takes a lifetime, rather than hiring somebody you just randomly picked from the yellow pages. Oh well, it's all part of the excitement, isn't it?