If today's level of protection of OFWs is to be measured by some independent operational evaluators or, if you wish, organizational effectiveness auditors, I am afraid that many gaps, much inadequacies would be discovered.
For instance, how many OFWs are languishing in detention centers and deportation halfway houses, in jails and prisons for reasons that are not necessarily of their own making. It is easy to blame the Labor Attaches and Welfare Officers. But the truth is there is total absence of BLAs (Bilateral Labor Agreements) that our foreign affairs diplomats should have crafted and negotiated with labor-receiving countries, before we even start deploying our people there.
For decades we have been exposing our OFWs to high risks destinations without the needed safety nets. This should be turned around with utmost urgency.
Protection to OFWs should be total to include their health, safety and welfare. And protection should not discriminate against those who have not renewed their OWWA membership.
Since the OFWs are paying for their membership, their protection should not terminate upon the end of their contract, but should be effective until their age of retirement. They should be protected from the hazards of loss of job due to retrenchments and illegal dismissals, and from deployment to repatriation.
Strengthening overseas labor offices
Apart from overhauling the private recruitment industry, which is polluted by two much greed and gross misrepresentations, there is an urgent need to put more resources into our overseas labor offices, especially those in highly hazardous countries like those in the Middle East.
There should be a rational policy on the choice and deployment of Labor Attaches and support staff. Countries with large OFW populations should be given corresponding number of frontline workers.
The Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs should be the one to deploy Labor Attaches and Welfare Officers. But this Office should be with the DOLE and not with the DFA. The Foreign Affairs Department should focus on political and economic diplomacy. And DOLE should handle assistance to OFWs in foreign lands.
As of today, there are too many head offices (aside from politicians) putting pressures on overseas labor officers, like the DFA, the DOLE, POEA, OWWA and the Commission on Filipino Overseas. This scheme of things weakens the frontliners, and detract their attention from protecting OFWs, to trying to make "pogi " points to too many big bosses up there.
Indeed, the new administration has to reinvent labor migration altogether or leave it to self destruct.