MANILA, 23 October — An economist is poised to take the helm at the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).
The appointment of Virgilio Angelo, currently General Manager of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) and an investment expert, has been unofficially announced.
Acting presidential spokesman Bobby Capco said, however, that Angelo has not accepted the appointment because “he has not yet seen any official appointment papers.”
Angelo himself refused to comment on his impending appointment because “he had nothing to say as yet.”
Sources said Angelo is close to first gentleman Mike Arroyo, a fact that got him the appointment despite the fact that there are many more nominees to the position.
The banker will take over the reins from former OWWA Administrator Wilhelm Soriano who went on sick leave last August and never returned. Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas earlier said Soriano was suffering from severe back pains.
Sto. Tomas and Soriano were often at odds over how the welfare agency should be run, principally over the investments entered into using contributions from OFWs. Soriano admitted that these were made without board approval.
Sto. Tomas had these investigated by the Philippine Anti-Graft Court (PAGC) but no charges have been filed specifically against Soriano.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Manuel Imson said labor officials have slashed OWWA’s budget by almost 200 million pesos for next year.
Soriano told Arab News before he went on leave that he was disappointed because OWWA’s Board of Directors, chaired by Sto. Tomas, had instituted a budget cap of P562 million for 2002, which is 80 percent of actual collections for 2001. Soriano said this is P180 million less than the agency’s 2001 budget of P742 million.
“With the approval of the cut, definitely we cannot accommodate requests for funding assistance,” Soriano earlier said. However, he added that this would not mean the shutdown of the agency, as previously reported. “We will try our best to cope with the situation,” which he said was a board decision.
The move by DOLE officials followed findings by the Commission on Audit (COA) that the OWWA was spending too much on administrative costs but little on welfare for the very people they are supposed to serve: OFWs.
Sto. Tomas had also stopped some activities of the OWWA, which were deemed to be sources of corruption. One of these was the so-called Friendship Games involving OFWs in the Gulf region.
Sources said that while participating delegations raised their own funds, the OWWA always ended up releasing big amounts of money. What reportedly prompted Sto. Tomas to disapprove the continuation of the games was the failure of personnel concerned to account for their expenses.
In an interview with Manila newspapers, Imson said the OWWA board was not renewing the services of overseas labor coordinators whose contracts have expired. “We have enough people in the welfare centers abroad. Besides, we also have the labor attaché and the embassy,” Imson said. He explained that the allowances given to officers abroad were a strain on the budget.
Meanwhile, non-government organizations (NGO) overseeing the welfare of migrants and their families in the Philippines said fund releases from OWWA have been nonexistent these past few months.Noel Josue, executive director of Kaibigan ng OFW, said they had not even been getting any fund releases from OWWA because of these budget cuts.
