New rules to abet illegal recruitment?

Licensed recruitment agencies warned the government yesterday against encouraging illegal recruitment by lifting safety nets in the deployment of overseas contract workers (OCWs).

The warning was aired by Federated Association of Manpower Exporters Inc. (FAME), an umbrella organization composed of nine industry organizations, in the light of a plan by the Department of Labor and Employment to liberalize direct-hiring and, at the same time, prohibit placement fee collections in countries where employers pay service fees.

FAME president Alfredo Palmiery asserted that the two measures would also "evidently pave the way for government takeover for our business."

Palmiery urged member-agencies of FAME to attend tomorrow’s congress to be held at the Westin Philippine Plaza Hotel meant to tackle the issue and plan their course of actions "to avert the sinister designs of the government against our industry."

Invited as resource speakers are legal luminaries, Palmiery said.

FAME pointed out that existing rules already provide adequate protection for OCWs, notably domestic helpers.

It claimed that a plan by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to expand the coverage of "name-hiring" would be counter-productive as it would merely "legitimize the operations of illegal recruiters."

"Worse, it may even deprive household workers of the protection and care currently provided by the licensed agencies," FAME stated in a letter to Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas.

FAME said allowing direct or name-hiring by relatives or by OCWs who traveled abroad on tourist visa and eventually landed a job, would be highly questionable.

The manpower agencies maintained that "it is almost impossible for an employer to directly hire a household worker from the Philippines without intermediaries."

"Hong Kong employers will never advertise in Hong Kong or in the Philippines that they need household workers. Moreover, they will not, by themselves, attend to the tedious process of documentation, visa application and contract authentication of their recruits.

"Most of them are working and busy people," FAME clarified.

It is also claimed that most of the intermediaries were not actually relatives of the prospective domestic helpers, but non-government organizations or unlicensed entities engaging in manpower recruitment.

"Recent pronouncements by DOLE indicate that the government is hard bent in implementing the new rules without considering our appeal," a FAME manifesto said.

"The objective is to cut down the number of private employment agencies," it added.

FAME claimed that the one-month-fee rule which the POEA is poised to impose would strangle their business, resulting in the closure of the market and subsequent takeover of the business by the government.

FAME ruled that DOLE appeared to have junked its appeal to stay the revised rules and regulations pending review of their proposals to "rationalize present policies on placement fees and make them realistic, market-oriented and country-specific." – Jimmy Montejo