OFWs urged to keep sending dollars

Presidential Adviser on Overseas Filipino Communities Heherson Alvarez will leave for the Middle East this week to meet with overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and encourage them to continue remitting their dollar earnings to the country and help stabilize the peso.

Even President Arroyo has appealed to OFWs to help the country by keeping up remittances to arrest the slide of the peso.

"Please tell your loved ones to remit their dollar earnings here," she told relatives of OFWs in the Middle East last week who availed of the government’s free long distance calls at call centers set up by government. "Then sell your dollars to help strengthen the peso."

Alvarez met earlier with officials of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) to discuss new ways to motivate OFWs abroad to remit their earnings through local banks.

He disclosed that his forthcoming visit to the Middle East is also meant to convince OFWs to "pool their funds together" so it can be invested in enterprises.

The pooled funds, Alvarez added, can be used to fund development projects in the countryside or even businesses which need large amount of capital.

Alvarez will first proceed to Saudi Arabia, where he will meet with Filipino communities and look into government programs that assist OFWs who may be affected by the war in Iraq.

He will then fly to Amman, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), particularly Abu Dhabi and Dubai, where there is a large number of Filipino workers.