MANILA, Philippines — Forty-six of the over 2,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) facing criminal cases abroad have been acquitted, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) said on Tuesday.
According to DMW Assistant Secretary Violet Illescas, they have only 24 legal retainers or law firms handling 2,457 cases in the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe.
“The total number of acquittals is 46, convicted 204, and terminated cases 202,” Illescas told Senator Joel Villanueva during the Senate subcommittee on finance’s Tuesday hearing.
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Before asking for updates on cases in 2024, Villanueva noted how disappointed they were last year after the Department of Foreign Affairs reported to them that zero OFWs of the 1,000 were spared conviction and imprisonment.
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Among the top five cases that the legal retainers handled were employer-employee disputes; drug-related cases; immigration cases, which involve loss of status or permit expiration; breach of trust or cases involving immorality; and contractual breach or personal obligations (failure to pay rent, car loan, credit card or cellphone).
Illescas added that 49 OFWs are currently on death row. These migrant workers are in Jeddah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Brunei, and Malaysia. Of the figure, 41 OFWs are in Malaysia.
For this year, the DMW received a budget of P8.503 billion based on the Department of Budget and Management’s National Expenditures Program for 2025. The amount is lower than the Congress-approved P10.12 billion in the 2024 General Appropriations Act.
The proposed P8.503 billion was greenlighted by the Senate subcommittee on finance during the same hearing.
In the lower chamber, however, lawmakers lamented that many initiatives and programs for OFWs worldwide would suffer due to a significant decrease in the agency’s 2025 budget.