POEA chief: Please give me some dignity

MANILA, Philippines—With a day to go before his expected departure, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration chief Carlos Cao Jr.  said Saturday he had yet to receive any official word about his removal from office.

Cao asked his superiors to at least give him some “dignity” and officially inform him that he was being replaced as the militant migrant rights group Migrante expressed support for the beleaguered POEA chief.

“I serve at the pleasure of the President and my only request from (the Department of Labor and Employment)—and I respect them all—I’m appealing to them to give me the dignity of being formally advised whether or not I’m going to be replaced or not,” Cao said in an interview.

“The President gave me dignity by appointing me to this office and I’m extremely grateful for that,” he added.

Cao earlier said that he was verbally but unofficially informed by his bosses at DOLE that they wanted to replace him. Labor Undersecretary Hans Cacdac is supposed to take over his post on Monday.

“That is up to them but at least they should formally inform or advise me,” Cao said.

Cao countered claims that he was being replaced for “poor performance” or that that he was not “in control” of his people at the POEA.

Cao said he was a “hands-on manager” who, in his first year alone,  cancelled the permits of nearly 300 recruitment agencies for abuses.

“Maybe that is why they are angry at me,” he said.

Cao said that he had closely followed the President’s directive to show “care” for overseas Filipino workers  who follow up on their papers at the POEA.

“When I came here, the POEA lobby was like a talipapa (a market place). Now, it’s like the lobby of a  hotel. This is because I followed the President’s instructions that government should show its care for OFWs,” Cao said.

He said he had streamlined the processing of OFW papers, resulting in “zero backlog” for land-based workers, put up air-conditioning units, water dispensers, and TV sets to make OFWs more comfortable.

“These are little things but these are what our workers appreciate. I think I’m the only POEA chief who has not been picketed by our workers. Yung iba nira-rally araw-araw,” Cao said.

“I admit I’m not an expert on migration or that I’m not an old hand in DOLE but I’m learning. And I think that when you’re dealing with millions (of OFWs), you need a people person to deal with their needs, and I’m a people person,” Cao said.

He said the reforms he implemented have led to a 3.74 percent increase in OFW deployment from 1,395,281 in the January to November 2010 period to 1,447,498 for comparative period in 2011.

He also noted that there was a 7 percent increase in remittances from migrant Filipinos around the world from $15.4 billion in January to October 2010 to $16.5 billion for the same period in 2011.

Cao found an unlikely supporter in the militant group Migrante, which said that his “impending replacement manifests the power struggle between new and old within P-Noy’s top labor honchos.”

“I think Atty. Cao’s integrity, of not being corrupt and unblemished records of service, a supposed qualifier to P-Noy’s political slogan ‘Tuwid na Daan’, eventually landed him in  POEA administratorship,” said Migrante Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona,

“In fairness to Atty. Cao, he has done a good job instituting bureaucratic reforms that streamlined the procedure of services to OFWs stakeholders… and in the combat against illegal recruitment activities, among others though he is just more than one year in office,” he added.

Monterona said he personally witnessed the “now more rationalized process” in obtaining the overseas employment certificate as he lined up on December 27 at the POEA building to get his OEC.

He said the process took him only “about 20 to 30 minutes” but added that more service windows must be made available.

Monterona said that it was Cao who busted the  proliferation of fake OECs that were being sold to OFWs through recruitment agencies.