Binay urges OFWs to register for 2013 polls

Vice President Jejomar Binay. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines – Vice President Jejomar Binay on Monday joined the efforts in drawing more overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to register for the May 2013 midterm elections.

“I’m calling on our countrymen abroad to go to our embassies and consulates to register as voters for the next elections,” Binay said in a statement, noting that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) was still 200,000 short of its target of one million overseas absentee voters (OAVs).

Binay also appealed to Filipinos who are currently in the country but will be going overseas during the elections to register through the local registration centers at the Commission on Elections (Comelec), Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA), or the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA).

On Friday, the DFA announced that total OAV registrants reached more than 800,000 as Philippine missions around the globe accounted for more than 212,009 new registrants.

Of the new registrants, a total of 110, 170 registered abroad. Some 36,391 came from the Middle East and Africa; 31,785 from the Americas; 21,959 from Europe, and 20,035 from the Asia Pacific.

As many as 101,839 of the new registrants, meanwhile, registered in local OAV registration centers at the DFA-Aseana, Commission on Filipinos Overseas, NAIA, POEA, Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, Joint Manning Group (JMG) and the Associated Marine Officers and Seamen’s Union of the Philippines (AMOSUP), and Philippine Transmarine Carriers Inc.

The DFA said its diplomatic posts around the world have stepped up efforts to encourage wider participation in the OAV through online campaigns and meetings with Filipino communities abroad.

It said Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario sent letters to some 4,000 Filipino community leaders around the world to seek support for the OAV.