LUCENA CITY -- As the government seeks to deploy two million laborers abroad next year, Filipino workers should brace themselves for more retrenchments, lower wages and worse working conditions overseas, Migrante International warned.
At the same time, it would hold the Arroyo administration "fully accountable for being hell-bent in exporting the most number of Filipinos abroad amidst the worsening global crisis."
Garry Martinez, chairman of Migrante International, recalled that in her 2007 state-of-the-nation-address, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo pledged to deploy two million OFWs before her term ends in 2010. "Time and again, we say that labor exportation is neither a tool for development nor an answer to the present crisis. We agree with CBCP [Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines] president Angel Lagdameo when he lamented the breakup of Filipino families because of parents working overseas," he said in a statement to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
Bishop Lagdameo had lamented that poverty forced parents to work overseas just to make ends meet, breaking up the family in the process. There are more than 11 million overseas legal and illegal Filipinos workers abroad, equivalent to about 11 percent of the total population of the country. Each year, more than a million Filipinos leave to work in different countries, most of them as domestic helpers and blue-collar jobs.
Recent data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration disclosed that a total of 1,221,829 OFWs were deployed worldwide from January 1 to November 30. The POEA said that there were close to half- a-million job orders that have not been filled; of the number more than 100,000 were new additions from October to December this year.
However, an undetermined number of overseas Filipino workers have lost their jobs due to the global crisis, which, according to the International Labor Organization, could render 20 million people jobless by the end of 2009. Martinez said that contrary to the claims of Arroyo, the Middle East region remains the worst destination for OFWs in terms of labor rights protection, especially now that it was also being hit hard by the global crisis.
He cited that in Dubai alone, labor complaints in the Ministry of Labor have tripled since November, most of which were cases of illegal termination and non-payment of salaries. The group said that the situation was similar even in Saudi Arabia, the top destination country of OFWs in the region. "It is gibberish when the Arroyo administration said that Middle East countries remain[ed] a haven for overseas employment just to cover up its inutility in addressing the crisis. Quite the opposite, the Ittefaq Steel Products Factory, the second largest steel manufacturer in Saudi Arabia, had announced that it would send 80 percent of its 2,145 workers on leave without salary for three months beginning Jan. 1, 2009," Martinez disclosed.
He added that in the United Arab Emirates, not only the real estate and construction industry were being affected by the present economic downturn. Big multinational companies like General Electric, IBM, and Jeffries International are likewise retrenching their workforce or are totally pulling out operations from the gulf country, he said. The Migrante chair urged government to concentrate on protecting the rights and welfare of overseas workers instead of focusing mainly on aggressive marketing of OFWs abroad.
"In this time of crisis the main problem of OFWs is the lack of access to legal protection. Migrant workers are the first one to be hit by this crisis and, more often than not, they don't have anyone to turn to in the event of labor disputes. It is unfortunate that our government remains callous on this problem," Martinez said.
