RIYADH, 13 January 2004 — It has taken a non-Filipino expat to point out that the hundreds of thousands of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Saudi Arabia enjoy no free satellite transmission of news or information from the Philippines.

“Jordanians, Thais, Bangladeshis and even Indians, to a certain extent, and other expatriate communities in the Kingdom enjoy free satellite transmission of news or information from their respective countries. But not overseas Filipinos who number 800,000 in the Kingdom,” said Omar Abu Hassan, operations manager of the construction firm Philipp Holzmann.

A check of Abu Hassan’s claim that other expats enjoy free satellite transmission services from their respective countries bore him out. “We don’t pay for the satellite transmission from home,” said Bun Yi, a Thai national who has been working in the Kingdom for the last 20 years. An Indian said: “I pay for our satellite transmission services but there are transmissions from India that are free.” Abu Hassan said “the number of OFWs in the Kingdom is big by any stretch of the imagination. The government, through the Philippine Embassy, could arrange a free or inexpensive satellite transmission of news through Hotbird or any other satellite service provider to Asian countries. Each of them could pay SR10 or SR20 to be kept at the embassy account,” he said.

The Philippine Embassy could not be contacted for comment but Nonoy Velo, the TFC country manager in Saudi Arabia, told Arab News Sunday night that it would be all right to provide a free satellite transmission without collecting fees from OFWs but the government has to pay instead for the services rendered.

At present, OFWs receive information or news from the Philippines through ABS-CBN’s The Filipino Channel (TFC), which uses the services of Martin Lockheed. For a family it charges a cash out of SR1,490 and after that, a yearly fee of SR760. It has different rates for groups. For a group of ten, it charges SR200 per head or a total of SR2,000, plus SR730 for equipment.

With the large number of OFWs in the Kingdom and considering their willingness to avail of amenities they can afford it is not far-fetched to think that most of them are TFC subscribers. That means the Filipino channel is a cash cow for the Lopezes who own ABS-CBN.

At present ABS-CBN is lording in the field being the only player at present but a competitor — GMA or Channel 7 — may soon start satellite transmission to OFWs in various parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia. If and when this happens, observers believe, it would redound to the benefits of OFWs with satellite transmission subscriptions.

“It would force ABS-CBN and the new player to provide quality newscasts and programs to their viewers so that they could attract more subscribers. As it is, some TFC programs have affected school children in a negative way,” a teacher at a Filipino community school told Arab News. She said the TFC popularized the “mag-otso-otso tayo,” which is being imitated by schoolchildren.

“Children don’t look good as they dance it. Nakakatawa sila (They are laughable). And what makes the heart sink is we pay TFC to make our children laughable, if not laughingstocks. At their age, they should learn something that will make them good and responsible citizens,” the teacher said.