MANILA, 17 October 2003 — A non-government organization acknowledged yesterday that the Arroyo administration has done a lot to improve the welfare of migrant workers, but added that the situation is far from ideal.
“Truly, the plight of overseas Filipinos and their families is still a seemingly endless one,” said Maita Santiago, secretary-general of Migrante International.
“We want to show that although we are pleased that many distressed workers have been repatriated, this is still not enough,” Santiago said, adding there are still some cases to be attended to and some which are not even moving.”
Santiago also said: “We are having a hard time getting support from the different government agencies catering to migrant Filipinos and without this support, the number of cases of distressed migrants will only increase.”
Migrante proposed that the government make policy changes regarding migration to help the sector.
Statistics from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said that there are more than 2,500 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) facing criminal charges abroad, including at least 10 men and 4 women on death row in Saudi Arabia.
At the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), 1,502 cases of distressed, missing, imprisoned, maltreated, raped, mentally and physically ill OFWs were handled in the first quarter of this year alone — that’s 17 cases a day. In the same brief period, OWWA claims to have handled 227 cases involving OFW deaths.
Migrante International has documented 10 “mysterious deaths” of (mostly women) OFWs since President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo took power. Next to contract substitutions and violations, the majority of Migrante’s case load has been in helping repatriate both living and dead migrant workers.
It seems that the DFA and the Arroyo regime prefer the “wait and see” method, Migrante lamented in a press statement.
It said DFA officials often argue that nothing can be done for Filipino migrants because they are simply subject to the laws of their host countries. “It is in the interest of not ‘angering’ foreign governments (that) the DFA and the Arroyo regime readily sacrifice the interests of OFWs,” the statement said.
Migrante said the government ought to give its best to help OFWs and not to treat them as “replaceable commodities.”
It said if the president truly wishes to address the plight of all migrants and their families, “she should end the government’s labor export policy and its commodification of OFWs. “
“Anything less is a band-aid solution that offers no genuine relief for the majority of the 8.1 million Filipinos overseas,” Santiago said. “It will only increase the number of distressed migrants na mapipilitan kumapit sa patalim (who are forced to cling to the knife’s edge) because of the chronic lack of viable jobs in the Philippines.”
