JEDDAH, 7 May — The proposal to transfer the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) to the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs is reportedly meant to preempt reforms being pushed by Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomas.
Arab News had been apprised of the plan by members of the labor export industry weeks before OWWA Administrator Wilhelm Soriano announced his intentions in a speech during the agency’s 20th anniversary celebration on Saturday.
He told the audience that he was pushing for the transfer in response to “the clamor of the many that for OWWA to be more responsive OWWA must now be placed under the able guidance of the Department of Foreign Affairs.”
A source at the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), speaking on condition of anonymity, said Secretary Santo Tomas wants to streamline OWWA to make it more effective in carrying out the mission for which it had been created — take care of the welfare OFWs.
“Secretary Santo Tomas wants to make OWWA more responsive to the problems of OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) instead of being a burden to them, but she is encountering resistance,” said the DOLE source.
Santo Tomas reportedly is looking into a proposed merger of the OWWA with the department’s Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) to cut down on administrative costs.
OWWA and POLO maintain separate offices abroad where there are big concentrations of Filipino contract workers.
In Saudi Arabia, both agencies have contingents in Riyadh and Jeddah, plus extension offices in Dammam to cover the Eastern Region.
Other proposals include merging the OWWA with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), another agency considered by many OFWs as a burden. OWWA is known to have vehemently opposed such suggestion.
Soriano and other OWWA executives are reportedly opposed to the merger plan and sources said the row is well known within the labor export circle in Manila. “This move to transfer the agency to the DFA is not really new,” the DOLE source also said. “I’m not sure if Guingona and Magallona are aware of the struggle.”
As reportedly earlier by Arab News, Vice President and Foreign Secretary Teofisto Guingona Jr. responded to Soriano’s proposal by saying he was open to accepting the transfer of OWWA to his department.
“We appreciate what OWWA is doing and we will gladly accept,” he was quoted as saying.
Guingona added, however, that the DFA’s legal department has to study the matter to determine how the transfer could be done.
Undersecretary Merlin Magallona, head of DFA’s Office of Migrant Workers Affairs, was also reported as saying that “from the viewpoint of policy,” this was the best way to go.
He noted that under the one-country team approach, all welfare officials assigned to a certain country have to work together under the chief of mission who, in most cases, is the ambassador or consular attaché representing the DFA.
The DOLE source said Soriano’s war with Santo Tomas is evident in his speech, which was applauded by OWWA personnel.
Soriano railed at unnamed government agencies who he said were trying to strip OWWA of control over programs and services to OFWs it now provides.
“It’s clear from Mr. Soriano’s statements that he was not only rallying OWWA personnel to protect their turf. He was also urging you OFWs to support his plan to move OWWA to the DFA. I’m not saying such transfer is bad. All I’m saying is that once OWWA is moved to the DFA, it will be beyond the labor secretary’s reform program,” the source said.
What’s wrong with OWWA
A glance at the OWWA’s accomplishment reports shows a really busy and useful agency. For the year 2000, for instance, OWWA reported the following as among its major accomplishments:
• Provided on-site welfare assistance to 210,750 distressed OFWs;
• Extended disability and burial assistance to 4,485 OFWs;
• Granted loans to 415 beneficiaries; and
• Assisted 4,041 seamen in the upgrade of their courses.
What reportedly did not impress Santo Tomas and other DOLE officials is the huge operating expenses of OWWA, vis-à-vis its allegedly bloated accomplishment reports.
Santo Tomas was also said to have been shocked upon finding that many of the OWWA’s foreign posts were not up-to-date in liquidating their cash advances.
A Commission on Audit (COA) report on the OWWA’s finances for the year 2000 showed that as of Dec. 31, 2000 a total of 174.54 million pesos remained unliquidated within the reglamentary period.
The worst case involved the OWWA post in Manama, Bahrain, which could not account for a total of $11,539.97 in collections from the so-called “voluntary OWWA membership” and Medicare fees on-site.
According to an OWWA officer in Saudi Arabia, it was because of this liquidation problem that Santo Tomas refused to give her go-signal to last year’s scheduled “Philippine Friendship Games” in the Gulf Region.
According to Migrant’s Focus Magazine, the OWWA’s administrative and operational costs comprise about 70 percent of the agency’s total budget each year.
It said the implication of this is that little is spent for the welfare of OFWs, who are being forced to pay a $25 fee to OWWA for every contract they sign, in addition to the 900-peso yearly insurance premium they have to pay, plus other charges by the POEA.
“They already have a 45 percent allocation for “Service Delivery Costs” (which encompasses wages, allowances and operations both in the Philippines and overseas) yet they even hid another 27 percent for on-site administrative and operational costs and called it part of on-site services. This is a malicious way to double the take,” said the magazine in a recent issue.
Even in the past, DOLE officials have pushed for the merger of OWWA and POLO to cut down on the administrative costs so that more money could be spent on actual OFW welfare and livelihood programs.
OWWA maintains 26 posts abroad, called Filipino Workers Development Centers, and manned by welfare officers. It also has units in all the regional centers in the Philippines.
As of Dec. 31, 2000, OWWA had a total work force of 513, comprising 308 career personnel, 31 casual and 92 contractual employees, and 82 consultants.
Consultants, usually shadowy and unaccountable characters derisively called as sulsultants, are known to be paid higher than what the career personnel get.
