Hospitals and jail visits

There are spiritual communities of Filipino migrants who volunteer to visit hospitals and jails. I just have to accredit them and support them too. It is rather depressing to realize how many hundreds of our OFWs are in hospitals without relatives and friends to visit them and lift up their spirit. It is exasperating to think how many hundreds of other Filipino migrant workers are in deportation centers, waiting to be deported for various violations of immigration and penal laws.

The government does not even have a car for the Labor Attaché to transport himself from the Embassy to the detention centers and the hospitals.

If only 5% of the 140,000 OFWs are in jails or in detention, at any given time, that means 7,000 Filipinos waiting to be visited. There is only one Labor Attaché and one Welfare Officer. How can 10 staff respond with efficiency to the rising demands of 140, 000 OFWs? And so, in the face of such an acute deficiency, we are constrained to accept the offer of good men and women to help us carry the burden.

The distressed cannot be arrogant

Those who need help can not afford to be snobbish. We can not pretend like some politicians who deliver privilege speeches telling the visiting US soldiers to go home to the US and yet, during the height of Ondoy and Peping, could not do anything but watch helplessly, as US soldiers in US helicopters and rubber boats saved hundreds of lives and deliver relief goods, foods and medicine. Privilege speeches could not save this nation from calamities and catastrophes.

 We, in the frontlines in labor migration, do need help from all sectors. Please send us help and not press releases nor copies of privilege speeches. The season for pretentions and political posturing are here. But spare us from partisan politicking. We need help and we need it now.

In the meanwhile, we shall rely on good Samaritans to nurse our wounds in this Middle Eastern wilderness of pain and tribulations, and to help us carry the heavy yokes in our journey to find meaning to all these. Ampo nalang ug amping.

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