MANILA, 24 May — All vacationing Overseas Filipino Workers will be issued an Electron identification card confirming their status as overseas workers at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) headquarters in Manila.
This project is being handled by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in coordination with the POEA, OWWA Administrator Wilhelm Soriano told Arab News.
Soriano said the overseas employment certificate (OEC) will be encoded in the card so that the OFW would no longer have to present a hard copy of the OEC to the Bureau of Immigration at the airport. “He will no longer need a paper document. Just his card which can be swiped there,” Soriano said.
The magnetic strip built into the card will contain all pertinent information of an OFW including his or her past and present deployment records and the OFW’s OEC, Soriano said.
He said the card was initially conceived as a means of keeping track of an OFW’s contributions to OWWA as well as the payment for his OEC.
OWWA Director Carmelina Velasquez said the POEA and OWWA have a common database which will be used for this.
“The OFW will be given a permanent ID number so his ID number will appear in all transactions. We will be able to see his whereabouts, the frequency of his deployment and his membership. We will be able to see if his membership has expired. He has been deployed but his membership is expired. That can be corrected,” Soriano declared.
Velasquez explained that the card will be provided free of charge when vacationing overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) register at the POEA.
Vacationing OFWs can get cards within three minutes upon completing their requirements for overseas employment at the POEA, Velasquez said.
Soriano said the card will be distributed by the Equitable Card Network Inc. (ECNI) through a memorandum agreement with OWWA signed last Jan. 21. The cards themselves will be supplied by Electron Visa of Singapore, Soriano said.
With additional technology, the card can also be used as an ATM card in five participating banks — Land Bank, DBP, Allied Bank, Asiatrust Bank and Equitable-PCI Bank.
“This feature is also compatible for remittances,” Soriano said. Velasquez said the card will initially be given to vacationing OFWs because of the large number of OFWs. By June 3, she said name hires or direct hires will also be issued the electron ID card.
By June 5 and 6, Velasquez said, the cards will also be issued by the POEA’s offices in Cebu and in Davao.
Soriano said “the ID itself is compatible to additional features” like a voter’s ID card. “Most importantly, the ID is evidence that you are a processed, documented Filipino worker,” Soriano said.
