Go easy on ‘unsafe for OFWs’ tag on countries, gov’t urged

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz

To avoid any diplomatic gaffes, a ranking member of the House of Representatives has urged the government to be lenient about tagging countries as unsafe for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said Monday.

Baldoz said Akbayan party-list Representative Walden Bello had formally asked the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to be “sensitive” about naming countries that fail to provide enough protections for OFWs as required by the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act.

Bello urged the POEA to consider as “compliant” countries that were deemed “partially compliant” pending negotiations with their governments.

“He wrote to ask that the partially compliant be treated as compliant without prejudice to negotiations for the protection of household service workers,” Baldoz said.

“That means that in terms of deployment, it would be continuous,” she said.

Bello, chairman of the House committee on overseas workers affairs, sent Baldoz a letter in her capacity as chairperson of the POEA governing board, which has the final say on which countries to ban for OFWs.

Under the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) must certify which countries had enough protections for OFWs and this certification must be approved by the POEA board.

To be certified as safe, a country should have “existing labor and social laws protecting the rights of workers; is a signatory to or a ratifier of multilateral conventions, declarations and resolutions relating to the protection of workers; and has concluded a bilateral agreement or arrangement with the Philippine government on the protection of the rights of OFWs.”

“The DFA will continue to issue certifications for noncompliant countries but (Bello’s) suggestion is that we should be sensitive about diplomatic repercussions. So maybe he is suggesting that we should not name them. I will have to get back to him,” Baldoz said.

The POEA governing board has declared 125 countries as safe for OFWs and 41 as having failed to meet the criteria.

The DFA, however, has decided to review the status of the 41 countries.

The DFA and some migrants groups had voiced concerns a deployment ban would strain relations with those countries, which included India, Cambodia, Iraq, Croatia and East Timor.

“The certifications (for the 41 countries) were reviewed, some were renegotiated, while others became compliant,” Baldoz said.

“So we will take up all of these in the board because we also have to contend with the law,” she added.