ALKHOBAR, 9 June — Filipino community leaders in the Eastern Province want President Gloria Arroyo to intervene in the row between the officials of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Manila.
Members of the so-called Accredited Community Partners (ACPs) in this region of Saudi Arabia will be sending a resolution to President Arroyo expressing concern that the is quarrel is putting at stake the welfare of more than 7 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) around the world.
They said President Arroyo should make sure that even as the irregularities at the OWWA are being investigated, there should ne no disruption of the agency’s programs for OFWs.
Leaders of the OFW Congress in the region, the All Filipino Community and Sports Commission (Afcscom), Saudi Arabia Hiligaynon Inc. (SAHI), Concerned OFWs Association, and other regional groups met Thursday night to discuss the matter.
The consensus was that OWWA chief Wilhelmn Soriano and Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas should focus on improving the government’s programs for OFWs instead of quarrelling.
Sto. Tomas is seeking to streamline the OWWA’s operations to make it more effective and at the same time ordered an investigation into the misuse of the agency’s funds.
But Soriano has accused Sto. Tomas of doing all these because she wanted him out.
During the meeting of ACPs in Alkhobar on Thursday, the consensus was to ask the president to continue the investigation on the OWWA anomalies and to make sure that the officials involved be made to pay for their crimes.
OFWs in the Kingdom are saddened to learn that the fees collected from them by force are meant to pay the fat salaries and benefits of the huge bureaucracy of OWWA and the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA).
But the ACP members said the OWWA should neither be abolished nor merged with other agencies because that could weaken rather than strengthen the very agency that was created to provide welfare to distressed OFWs.
In support of this line, some ACP members are said to have also initiated an e-mail campaign to convince the president to convert OWWA into an independent, autonomous agency.
Draft of unsigned messages were distributed to the community leaders for them to send to President Arroyo through her email at [email protected] and [email protected] asking that “OWWA must be made an independent, autonomous body with diplomatic personality bestowed upon its personnel who are serving overseas to make them more effective in representing distressed OFWs.”
Some unsigned draft messages were also distributed for OFWs to send to President Arroyo tried to discredit the labor secretary.
One letter said that Sto. Tomas is “tolerating the abuses against the OFWs when she recognized and honored Saudi employers who have violated the labor rights of migrant workers.”
