RIYADH: Migrant rights advocacy group Migrante-Middle East (M-ME) has lambasted their country’s leadership over the claim that the number of overseas Filipino workers are declining due to sustained economic growth in the Philippines.

The group has called on President Benigno Simeon Aquino III to visit Saudi Arabia before his term ends next year to see for himself the situation of stranded Filipinos at various embassy shelter houses for both male and female OFWs. Philippine Ambassador Ezzedin Tago spoke recently about President Aquino’s plan to visit Saudi Arabia, yet did not mention a specific date.

According to data from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), there were over 10 million OFWs in 2010, but their number dropped to about 8.359 million as of the end of 2014.

M-ME regional coordinator, John Monterona, disputed the claim saying that in 2013 there were 1,469,179 OFWs at various destinations, of which 464,888 were new workers who equated to 31.6 percent of the total number of deployed OFWs that year.

“If there is a decline in the deployment of Filipinos abroad, this is mainly due to the shrinking labor market amid the current administration’s intensified search for a labor market frontier so that it can continue peddling cheap Filipino labor,” Monterona said.

Monterona said, “During the early years of the Aquino presidency, his labor honchos claimed that they had deployed more than 1.2 million workers a year and had offered jobs to millions of unemployed Filipinos.”

Monterona said that most of the OFWs came from the C, D, and E classes, mainly from the families of workers and farmers who became skilled workers and professionals.

Citing statistics from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), he said that the overall number of OFW deployments saw a steady increase even during the first year of the Aquino administration.

In 2010, there were 1,123,676 OFWs, of whom 341,966 were newly-hired employees that equate to 30.4% of the total number of OFWs deployed that year, while in 2011, there were 1,318,727 OFWs around the world, of which 437,720 were new employees equating to 33.1% of the total number of OFWs posted that year.