The government's failures, the OFWs' frustrations

The government has continued to fail the 12 million Filipino migrant workers, from 200 countries all over the world,  who bring home no less than $20 billion every year, thereby pushing the Philippine economy to a level that has never been reached before. Between the OFWs' tremendous contributions to the national government, on the one hand, and the government officials' ineptitude in managing labor migration, on the other hand, there is an ocean of frustrations. The wide gap between policy and implementation continues to cause a lot of dismay and disillusionment among the OFWs. The thrust of the government is merely to look good, even as many of our overseas workers are languishing in jails for supposed violations of foreign laws, which our DFA and DOLE officials have failed to explain to the millions of Filipinos leaving abroad each year.

The so-called PDOS (Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar) is a farce. There is no destination-specific and honest-to-goodness orientation to make sure that the OFWs are given correct and adequate knowledge on the culture, the laws, the immigration systems and procedures in the countries of destinations. The Filipinos are being sent abroad without sufficient instruction on what to do in case they have problems with the law of the host government. All OFWs, especially those who are directly hired, are not properly endorsed to the POLOs (Philippine Overseas Labor Offices). The labor attaches and the welfare officers who are posted in the host countries do not even know, on a day-to-day basis, on the number and identities of the Filipinos arriving daily in their respective countries of assignment. These Filipino officials on the ground do not even know the addresses of the OFWs in the country they are posted in.

Illegal trafficking of women and children continue unabated. They are usually trafficked at the backdoors of Tawi-Tawi, Sulu and Basilan and sent to Sandakan, Tawao and Kota Kinabalu, Labuan Island and smuggled into mainland Malaysia where they would be brought to Thailand, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. The government is too busy doing other things than to man our ports and to watch all islands so as to prevent the predators of our human capital from preying on innocent victims of this nefarious human trading. The Embassy in Kuala Lumpur has no way of knowing what is happening to the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Filipinos who cross the borders illegally to Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. There are thousands of Filipinos languishing in the detention centers in Sabah and Sarawak. The government fails to report this to the people.

The problems in the Middle East on unfair and cruel treatment of our women do not seem to alarm the government. There are hundreds still being encamped right in front of our embassy in Riyadh and yet, the officials assigned there seem to consider it as a standard operating procedure. There are many domestic helpers who are being treated with disdain, insult and abuses and our POEA, OWWA and DOLE still continue to approve job orders sending women to dirty, difficult, degrading, deceptive and dangerous jobs. Many of them suffered diseases, disability, death, or despair and derangement. But the government, like the pied piper of Hamelin, continues to abet the modern slave trade to the Middle East. This trade generates billions for the recruiters while the damage our national honor and desecrate the dignity of our people.

Why does our government continue to abet this extremely damaging human trade? Why are we not exploring other options to generate jobs for our people? These and many other frustrations continue to exacerbate the erosion of faith in our government. There is no economic progress that can make up for such tremendous losses of our national dignity. The government should now make a complete and unequivocal change of its labor migration policies and procedures or else lose totally the faith of its people in its sincerity to tread the straight and narrow path of righteousness.