Undocumented

Forgive me, I fail to see the validity of whatever it is the Filipinos camped out at the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh are demanding.

Last year, the government of Saudi Arabia announced its intention to crack down on undocumented foreign workers in the kingdom. Then the Saudis extended the deadline for repatriation twice, the last one to July this year.

There was enough time for the undocumented Filipino workers to find a way out, and home. Riyadh has every right to banish undocumented foreign workers. The Filipinos who had somehow managed to make their way to the kingdom without proper documentation had the responsibility of finding their way back.

It turns out, thousands of them did nothing, vainly hoping the crackdown would never come. Today, these undocumented Filipinos are demanding the Philippine government care for them. I fail to understand that attitude.

Five years ago, I participated in several missions to rescue hundreds of distressed Filipino workers camped out in the various offices of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office. Filipino corporations donated for those missions.

On each mission, we took out hundreds of truly miserable Filipinos, housed in subhuman conditions. Some of them suffered emotional distress and had to be plucked out of psychiatric hospitals. All of them, we lectured about the importance of having full documentation and clear contracts. Those lectures fell on some deaf ears.

Multi-tasker

In the heat of a campaign where, the surveys say, former senator Dick Gordon might be fighting for his political life, he left for Bangkok to attend a UN conference. There is reason for that.

Gordon travelled April 30 to participate in a conference on disaster preparedness organized by the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP). He spoke on the topic “Building Resilience to Natural Disasters and Major Economic Crises.” The keynote address was delivered by Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra and Gordon attended as chairman of the Philippine National Red Cross.

While campaigning for senator, Gordon continues to discharge his responsibilities as head of the local Red Cross organization. This is so like Dick, a man with incredible energy, a person born to multitask furiously.

Disaster-mitigation is Dick’s passion. We recall how, when Pinatubo erupted in 1991, Gordon mobilized his stricken city for rescue and relief operations. When the US Navy hastily abandoned their Subic base, Gordon quickly organized an army of volunteers to secure the facilities eventuality turned over us.

While Clark air base was heavily looted during the disaster, Subic was kept relatively intact, except of course for the damage wrought by the ash fall. That meant Subic was readier to run as a special economic zone after the calamity passed.

I remember Dick from the period before Pinatubo intervened. We belonged to opposite sides of the bases treaty debate and went on some sort of debating tour in several places, including Singapore, before an audience of regional policymakers.

As head of the UP research team commissioned by the Philippine Senate to conduct a study for the economic reuse of the US bases, I advocated termination of the bases treaty. Dick argued for the retention of the bases.

Once, I jokingly complained about Dick’s ability to say ten words for each one I could manage to utter onstage. That will not matter, I told him, because I wrapped myself in the flag and will sway public emotion to my side of the argument.

Actually, we both privately agreed that the country required some amount of transitioning, including a period of joint civilian-military use of the facilities. However, Pinatubo intervened and the Senate was due to vote decisively on the matter of extending/terminating the bases treaty. The debate was sharply polarized.

My side won the argument by way of the Senate vote; but it was Dick who played the truly heroic role of saving his city and conserving a built-up facility so it could immediately be pressed into the service of the national economy. Eventually, Dick was able to win legislation enabling Subic to function as a special economic zone. He headed up the economic zone in its formative years until he took a seat in the Senate.

In the aftermath of the Pinatubo tragedy, Dick saw to it that Olongapo and Subic invested in rescue and relief teams. Those teams saw action in many parts of the country in the calamities that visited over the past two decades.

Dick brought his legendary energy to the Philippine National Red Cross. The PNRC previously focused almost exclusively on collecting blood donations. After Dick took over, the Red Cross transformed into a full-service organization with emergency medical services and state-of-the-art rescue units.

Beyond rescue and relief capabilities, the PNRC extended its capacities to cover rehabilitation. The Red Cross built nearly 50,000 housing units for communities nationwide dislocated by natural calamities. When he served as senator, Gordon used his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) for training and capitalization of some 70,000 beneficiaries.

The UN ESCAP, in its invitation for Gordon to speak, paid the man resounding tribute. The UN agency told Gordon; “You have led significant reforms that promote ex-ante disaster prevention and made sure that promises are grounded in strong legal frameworks. This is not easy in the context of competing resource demands.”

With all the perils introduced by global warming, it will be comforting for this man to hold a policymaking role more than just heading up a non-governmental organization.