JEDDAH, 29 December 2003 — The leader of group of Filipino organizations here yesterday said it was unfair for Acting Labor Secretary Manuel Imson to blame migrant Filipino workers for draining the fund of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).
Sam delos Santos, chairman of the Alyansa group, said it is doubly insulting for Imson to accuse the overseas workers, or OFWs, of being spoiled with dole-outs when many of them are even going out of their way to assist distressed fellow migrant workers in instances when the welfare agency is not ready to help.
“It is very frustrating that Imson puts the blame on the hard-working OFWs when the vast majority have not benefited from OWWA services,” delos Santos said in a statement e-mailed to Arab News.
Imson was earlier reported by the Manila media as saying the OWWA’s new policy limiting benefits to OFWs with existing contracts will remain in effect despite protests by non-government organizations and overseas groups.
“They got used to dole-outs. Mawawala ang pondo (We’ll run out of money). We have to have some discipline in the usage of the fund,” Imson was quoted by the Inquirer News Service as saying on Friday.
Under the OWWA Omnibus Policies, livelihood loans, hospital benefits, disaster or emergency loans, and death benefits have been scrapped.
OFW advocate organizations under a coalition headed by the Conference of the Philippines-Episcopal Commission for Migrants and Itinerant Workers (CBCP-ECMI) and the Philippine Migrants Rights Watch (PMRW) said that under the new policies, illegally terminated OFWs could not avail of OWWA services.
“It has practically reduced the number of beneficiaries by restricting its services to active members. The returnees, or those who have contributed to the OWWA funds while working abroad, can no longer access OWWA services under the Omnibus Policies. Worse, membership is confined until the effectivity of the contract, which means illegally terminated OFWs are no longer OWWA members. Rather than abandon them, government should provide more services to illegally terminated OFWs,” the coalition said.
Imson said, however, that the OWWA would not only “increasingly limit” its spending for benefits until the OWWA”s capital fund reached eight billion pesos, but also encourage OFWs to contribute more to the fund.
“We really want to increase collection and reduce expenses. We’re also planning to increase voluntary OWWA membership among all overseas Filipinos,” he told the Inquirer. He said the OWWA’s capital fund stood at only six billion pesos.
“The OWWA board has decided that all spending will be limited to 80 percent of the collections with 20 percent accruing to the capital fund. The year after, spending will be limited to 70 percent and 30 percent to the capital fund and so on until we reach the cap of eight billion pesos,” he said.
Imson said the capital fund would be used for additional programs for overseas Filipino workers that require large amounts of capital such as housing.
He further said the agency would be restructured so that its 500-strong personnel at the OWWA offices in the Makati would be slashed to 400. “More OWWA personnel will be assigned in the regions to implement programs for the families,” he was quoted as saying.
In his statement, Sam delos Santos warned that the OWWA might have actually gone bankrupt as a result of bad management.
“While he (Imson) claimed a six-billion-peso OWWA capital fund, it is sad to note that up to this time, the agency has not published its audited financial statements for the years 2001 and 2002. If we are to analyze the latest available audited financials for year 2000 and the COA’s findings, it would be very clear that the mess in OWWA fund was created by mismanagement and misuse of funds,” he said.
Delos Santos said the best example of this mismanagement and misuse of fund was the OWWA’s investment in Smokey Mountain Project Participation Certificates (SMPPC) with face value of 664 million pesos in an irregular manner.
“The investment was made not in accordance with the law,” he said. He cited the Commission on Audit’s (COA) year 2000 report, which recorded P192.01 million in unconfirmed livelihood and regular loans. The figure was P186.98 million in 1999.
“These accounts were not confirmed because of inadequate records. Apparently, these could no longer be collected,” delos Santos said.
He also noted that welfare officers and center coordinators failed to liquidate P175 million pesos for year 2000 in advances they made supposedly for several on-site projects.
What this means, he said, is that “if these programs/projects were not implemented, some officials could have been benefited.”
