MANILA, 24 June 2004 — Migrant worker advocates yesterday criticized a plan by the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) to impose another tax on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) as ludicrous and short-sighted.

MIAA general manager Edgardo Manda had said in a press conference a special tax should be imposed on OFWs since most of them have enough money to pay for the airport terminal fee during departure.

“This only goes to show how limited the government’s appreciation of labor migration is,” Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), said.

She said Manda did not even consider that while OFWs earn dollars, their seeking employment abroad entails sacrifice considering the perils of living separately with one’s family. “Even financial institutions like the World Bank are already sending us signals that reliance on OFW remittances is not good for the economy and here they (government) are proposing a tax on OFWs,” she added.

Noel Josue, president of Kaibigan (Friends of Filipino Migrant Workers), said this proposal goes against RA 8042 or the 1995 Migrant Workers Act. Under Section 35 of RA 8042, OFWs are “exempt from the payment of travel tax and airport fee.”

“That proposal is counterproductive to the workers,” Francisco “Jun” Aguilar Jr., president of the Federation of Migrant Workers (FMW) group, added.

Sana said that instead of training their sights on OFWs in order to increase revenues, the government should make the bureaucracy more efficient and find a way to reduce corruption.

Manda had earlier said OFWs should be charged additional fees, specifically the airport terminal fee, in order to augment the income of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

He admitted that MIAA was having financial problems and facing possible enormous expenditures in the rehabilitation of the Terminal 1 building, pending the start of operations of Terminal 3, which is locked in a legal dispute between the government and Piatco, the consortium that built it.

Manda said most OFWs seem to have enough money to pay for the airport terminal fee during departure, because of the high peso-dollar exchange rate. But he admitted that there were no concrete plans to impose the fee.

“That is a highly political issue,” Manda said.

There are as many as 2,000 OFWs leaving for abroad daily, passing through the NAIA Terminal 1 and the NAIA Centennial Terminal 2.