10 reasons why we should stop sending maids abroad

High costs, low benefits.

Enough empirical wisdom drawn from long and extensive experience in working as Labor Attaché abroad, and multiple researches, studies and analysis have compelled me to come forward and declare my personal position on the issue of sending domestic helpers as OFWS.

This generation is inflicting serious damage on our future by destroying the very foundation of our society, in allowing wives and mothers to leave behind young husbands and very young children.

Our government must take a bold step by deciding to stop the exodus of women workers to alien cultures where many of them are being raped, maimed, enslaved and subjected to all forms of assault to human dignity and human rights. The most opportune time to make such a decision is now with a new president, a new Labor Secretary and a new wave of hopes for positive changes.

The assumption of a new national leadership should yield an adoption of a new paradigm, new labor policy, and a set of new thinking, not just outside the box, but thinking without any box, at all.

I have 10 reasons to push for this new advocacy:

First, there are simply too much costs, both economic, social and political, in the deployment of domestic helpers abroad. The benefits, if any, are too inconsequential. The bottom line is that the nation is suffering silently, the future is badly affected seriously and nobody is undertaking a serious social accounting to draw a balance between costs and benefits.

Second, the DHs are the most vulnerable sector among our migrant workers. They are confined inside the houses of their masters, where they work and also reside.Their passports are confiscated, they are not allowed to use their own phones, much less to go out at will. They are prone to being sexually molested, their salaries are often withheld. Deprived of decent and safe sleeping quarters, when they get sick or injured, they are not provided proper medical care.

Staggering social costs.

Third, because of the wives' employment abroad, husbands are often led to infidelity and betrayals. Wives abroad also wittingly or unwittingly usually develop unfaithful and immoral relationships. Both spouses' infidelity bring about serious damages to the institutions of marriage and the family.

Fourth, when marriages break up, the children become the victims of a broken family or a dysfunctional one.They develop unstable psychosocial personalities, they don't mature normally, and are prone to drug addiction, juvenile delinquency and premarital sex and pregnancies, thereby complicating the problems of society.

Fifth, the absence of a mother in the family has been proven to cause incestuous sex, rape, seductions, and acts of lasciviousnesss between the father and the young children.

Sixth, only the recruiters and the usurers are making a killing out of this business. For every maid sent abroad, a local agency makes a net profit of one thousand US dollars from the foreign employers.

If an agency deploys 200 maids a month or 2,400 a year, that means that agency makes 2.4 million a year, which are not declared as income, thus, untaxed, because no receipt is issued for these transactions. These do no include the collateral income made by agencies from medical clinics which give them rebates for exorbitant fees, the fees for training and lodging while waiting for their flights abroad.

Seventh, neither the sending country nor the receiving country can provide ample protection for these DHs. There is not enough laws on either country that provide safety nets for them. They are often the victims of crime or the perpetrators of murder of their employers, and the help provided by both government are neither adequate nor correct.

Eighth, there are no bilateral agreements between the sending and receiving countries to protect the DHs. They are being treated as slaves by certain host countries, and slaves don't have rights.

Ninth, the jobs of domestic helpers belong to the 4 Ds: Dirty, Difficult, Dangerous and Degrading in the eyes of many.

Tenth, it is high time to unburden ourselves from the reputation of being the number one supplier of maids in the whole world. The Philippines has a lot more to offer to the global market, than our own wives and mothers to be enslaved by alien masters who don't have a basic respect for our country and people.

The time has come for us to save our families, redeem our honor and save the future.