MANILA, 31 May — A non-governmental organization (NGO) is objecting to the proposed statement of policy in the new rules and regulations on overseas employment that the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) is proposing.
Noel Josue, Executive Director of Kaibigan ng OCWs Inc. (formerly Friends of Filipino Migrant Workers) said in the proposed policy statement, overseas employment is specified as the source of development.
“It should not be like that,” Josue told ArabNews, “that in the framework of government, overseas employment has become part of the development strategy of the government.”
POEA chief Rosalind Baldoz is pushing for changes in the agency’s rules and regulations to make it more responsive to changing times.
Under the present law, Baldoz said, it’s so hard to cancel a license of erring placement agencies. She said that there should be four adverse decisions that are final and executory before an agency’s license could be cancelled.
Under the proposed new rules, one adverse decision would be enough to call for the cancellation of a recruiter’s license.
Josue said they have no objection to this particular change as explained by Baldoz.
But, he said, the policy statement makes it seem that “overseas employment facilitated development” where in Republic Act 8042 (Migrant Workers Act), the premise is that the state “does not promote overseas employment to attain economic development.”
He said the opposite had been changed although that provision had not been removed from RA 8042, which is a law.
“But we think overseas employment cannot provide a sustainable development,” Josue added, explaining it was not a long-term thing. The lasting development, he said, should come from the profits of local industries and exports, high-tech industries.
“Because when you develop those, then development will follow.”
Josue said the private sector or the legal recruiters were also of the same mind as the POEA, that overseas employment provided development although to attain this development, the recruiters said they should be allowed to conduct business freely and without restriction.
He said this is wrong because once the country’s economy becomes dependent on overseas employment to spur development, it will stop developing its local industries.
“They will not create more local jobs rather more overseas ones,” Josue said.
Service exporters
The Philippine Association of Service Exporters (PASEI) said industry players want the POEA to include changes such that the agency should no longer interfere in the business of recruitment of OFWs.
“We are saying we are not against the review of the rules. We are not saying we are not against coming up with more rational rules. We are not against facilitating the deployment,” PASEI president Victor Fernandez said.
He said PASEI members “don’t want government to interfere in business because government has no business in being in business. Government should only be there to facilitate business, to encourage entrepreneurs, to create the atmosphere so that business would prosper.”
