Solon slams labor chief over OFW hiring limits

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Pimentel lashed out at Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas for "trivializing what appears to be a legitimate threat against our hundreds of thousands of overseas workers angling for employment in the Middle East."

Earlier, Sto. Tomas had belittled the enforcement of "localization" policies in some countries in the Middle East, saying that the Philippines has managed to continue deploying workers to the area even as these policies have been in place since 1982.

"Her dismissal of the issue is grossly unbecoming of a labor secretary, whose primary task is to safeguard and secure the employment prospects of Filipinos, whether here or abroad," Pimentel said.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain, however, had agreed to restrict the hiring of foreign workers during the Gulf Coordinating Council meeting last December.

Sto. Tomas had said that her office had not received any official notification from our labor attaches regarding the issue. "Actually, it’s the first time I’ve heard of it."

"This is particularly disturbing," Pimentel said. "What measures is Secretary Sto. Tomas proposing to take to accommodate the possible re-entry of these displaced workers into the local labor market?"

Pimentel added that this development should not come as a surprise because "the global economic downturn is exerting pressure on everyone to reduce their spending to the bare minimum. This includes expenditure for labor, especially from foreign countries."

"This is the real picture, and there is no need to pretend the threat is not there," he said.

He said that instead of belittling such reports, Sto. Tomas should seek the assistance of various government and non-government agencies in coming up with alternative livelihood programs for OFWs that can no longer be absorbed by the international market.

"This includes would-be displaced workers not just from the Middle East, but also from Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, and especially Singapore, which is now in recession," Pimentel warned.