Unsolicited advice to the incoming president regarding OFWs - Part 1

Create a new department for overseas employment and migration.

Managing labor migration, involving ten million Ofws in more than 200 countries all over the world, who remit no less than 20 billion dollars a year, is a major area of administration that requires an expert and a specialized focus. Lumping together this important segment of our national concern with the other divisions and agencies in government has denied our modern heroes, the OFWs, the special attention that they deserve.

Based on my years of experience as a diplomat and as a Labor Attaché in Malaysia, Kuwait and now Taiwan, I can say without fear of contradiction, that, the way we do it today, we are shortchanging the Filipino migrant workers.

There is a need to integrate the very big bureaucracy, the POEA, and the very rich OWWA, with the Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLO) attached to the embassies in countries to which we deploy our overseas workers. The present disjointed, often uncoordinated and redundantly duplicating units often leads to confusion and waste of government resources.

I strongly submit that it will be greatly beneficial to all concerned if we integrate all these agencies into a separate Department, Commission or Board, under a Secretary or Director General with the rank of a Cabinet member, similar to the TESDA Director General.

Allocate more resources to the overseas labor operations.

In some Middle Eastern countries, the number of runaways exceed 300 at any given time. The size of the Center and the budget for food and other needs should be increased accordingly. The number of support staff and the amount of financial support should be commensurate with the size and complexity of the challenge.

Embassy officials and staff who are not heavily loaded should be asked to help the Labor Attachés and the welfare officers as they have to visit hospitals, jails and immigration detention centers. Enough vehicles should be provided and head offfice should be solicitous of the needs of the operations in the frontlines.

The OFWs are paying for the services that the government renders them. These are not free. Hence, government should be fair to the so-called modern heroes. The OFWs pay big money to be covered by OWWA. They also pay for Overseas Employment Certificates every time they come home. They do not only remit billions of money to our national economy, they pay for the services that they receive.