RIYADH, 22 July 2005 — Last year, the government brought glad tidings to OFWs from parts of Central and Western Mindanao when it opened an extension office of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Iligan City.
This year, the government seems bent on taking away what it had given.
A labor official, who asked not to be identified, told Arab News that the POEA-OWWA regional office in Cagayan de Oro City is planning to recall its officer in Iligan and to close the extension office very soon.
No reason was given by the official for the planned closure but OFWs who were aware of the existence of the Iligan office were alarmed.
“They did the right thing in putting up that extension office. Now they are undoing it,” lamented Usodan P. Dida-agun, who works with Mitsubishi Electric Saudi Ltd. In Riyadh.
Dida-agun said the OWWA office in Iligan enables many vacationing OFWs from the provinces of Lanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur and Misamis Occidental to spend more time with their families when they go on vacation.
“Without the OWWA extension office in Iligan, OFWs would have to waste some days either in Manila or in Cagayan de Oro just to get their OECs,” Dida-agun said.
He was referring to the overseas employment certificate that the POEA issues to vacationing workers so that they can avail themselves of an exemption in the travel tax when they return to their work abroad.
Dida-agun said closing the Iligan office would run counter the government policy of “helping alleviate the lives of OFWs and their dependents back home.”
“We are respectfully requesting the authorities concerned not to close the office but to instead enhance the services offered,” he said.
One such service is the presence of a tourism representative to whom the dependents of OFWs could apply for tax exemption certificates, he suggested.
Saleh Ampaso Bucay, secretary-general of Federation of Maranao Associations in Saudi (FEMAS), urged President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo not to allow the POEA or OWWA to close the office.
Bucay urged other groups or individuals who stand to benefit from the POEA-OWWA presence in Iligan to speak up by writing to President Arroyo or officials in Manila and Cagayan de Oro.
“To me it would be a big frustration if that office will just be abolished,” said Bucay, whose group had trumpeted the opening of the extension office last year in the FEMAS website Maranao.com
