THE PANDEMIC has resulted to the repatriation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Their sad plight amplifies the need for a government agency solely focused on their welfare.
The proposed Department for Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos (MWOF) must be given enough manpower and resources so it could address the “six Rs” Filipinos who have left their homeland to work have to grapple with – red tape, recruitment, regulation, response to emergencies, repatriation, and reintegration. These are usual problem areas that the new department must focus on. If you categorize the sad stories of OFWs into chapters, most will fall in one of the six Rs, but some in all of the six! Even members of the Filipino Diaspora whose tales have happy endings have had to contend with one of the six Rs.
The “6 Rs” is the price overseas Filipinos have to pay so their families and the nation can benefit from the seventh R, which is remittances. Overcoming the economic slowdown caused by the pandemic, OFWs still managed to send home $33.2 billion last year, equivalent to one-third of the present P4.506 trillion national budget.
But while remittances can be dutifully counted, there are no metrics for the economic returns of migration, none for its social costs.
The proposed DMWOF must be able to address the “6 Rs” because relief from these problem areas is what we owe Filipinos who have no choice but to work abroad for lack of opportunities at home.
Let us be clear, however. A DMWOF should not be meant to institutionalize a labor export policy, because no country should be dispatching its best and brightest to serve in alien lands. The goal is to provide the people the necessary and adequate support in overcoming the difficult predicaments they encounter overseas; not of their own choice, but as brought about by what has become unavoidable desperate necessity. The government must thus serve and protect those who have chosen this path of earning a living so their family can survive.
Top of the to-do-list is purging recruitment with anomalies. Red tape is another unique OFW experience. Then there must be a mechanism for effective government response to Filipinos in distress.
But one of the biggest unmet needs of OFWs is reintegration, the important post-work assistance they deserve. They are not machinery to be mothballed but unselfish people who have done so much for us and can still do so much for society with the wealth of knowledge they are bringing home.
