Migrante: Gov't support for migration a desperate move

CEBU – Migrante International, an alliance of Filipino migrant organizations, is opposing the institutionalization of migration policies and labor migration, the two areas that would be explored during the 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development, which will be held here in the Philippines next week.

In a forum yesterday, Migrante International chairman Roy Anunciacion said the decision of government to support labor migration is a desperate move because overseas Filipino workers reportedly do not get the treatment they deserve from the government despite them being the biggest earner of the country.

Anunciacion said migration is not an instrument for progress but a sign of the country’s underdevelopment. Aside from this, it also puts Filipino migrants at risk abroad.

Anunciacion said that while the government enjoys the remittances of OFWs, which the country uses to pay for its debts, they suffer from insubstantial services and lack of protection against human rights violations.

“In 2006, we made a study and found out that only 10 percent of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration’s annual budget is allocated for OFWs direct services, which is unfair because the money the bureau uses is from the hard work of OFWs,” Anunciacion said.

In a study that the group conducted in 2000, Anunciacion said they also found out that children of OFWs are the ones mostly affected by the absence of a member.

He said children of migrants are usually troubled because they are deprived of parent’s personal care.

On a large scale, Anunciacion said brain drain is the biggest effect of migration, which deprives Filipinos the best professionals that could offer the best services to their countrymen.

The fact that the Philippines is the second biggest supplier of doctors in the world reportedly aggrieves the country because Filipinos are now suffering from a poor health system caused by lack of doctors, Anunciacion said.

The ration of doctors to patients at present is reportedly at 1: 26,000.

Aside from brain drain, migration also reportedly promotes “de-skilling” because a bigger income abroad would reportedly force a worker to foray into a profession that is not in line with his field of expertise. — Jessica Ann Pareja/ JMO (THE FREEMAN)