FINDING ANSWERS
Former Senator
Atty. Joey Lina
The recent death of Jeanelyn Padernal Villavende that triggered the ongoing deployment ban of newly hired domestic workers to Kuwait highlights anew the plight of many OFWs facing horrible conditions abroad.
“When will this inhumane treatment of our Filipino workers end? To the Kuwaiti government and all others, we seek and expect your assistance in this regard,” an exasperated President Duterte had said two years ago when a total ban of OFWs in Kuwait was first imposed. “We do not seek special treatment or privileges for our workers but we do expect respect for their dignity and basic human rights. Keep them free from harm. I implore you… the Filipino is no slave to anyone, anywhere and everywhere.”
But despite the President’s plea, harm has still befallen OFWs. “We consider Jeanelyn’s tragic death a clear disregard of the agreement signed by both our country and Kuwait in 2018 which seeks to uphold and promote the protection of the rights and welfare of our workers in Kuwait,” Presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said.
The deployment ban, which took effect last Friday but does not cover skilled workers and those returning to Kuwait with existing contracts, is intended “to deliver the message that we mean business in protecting our Overseas Filipino Workers,” according to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III who warned “it might ripen into a total deployment ban if we do not get justice for Villavende.”
The partial ban, coupled with the possibility of more OFWs returning to the Philippines amid fears of a worsening situation in the Middle East resulting from the killing of Iran’s top military commander Qasem Soleimani in a US airstrike on Jan. 3, amplifies again the pressing need to deal with those affected by the recent developments.
The miserable plight of many OFWs has revealed many horror stories all these years, yet the exodus of Filipinos seeking employment abroad has continued. Every administration in the post-Marcos era has hoped foreign employment would only be a stop-gap measure to keep our economy afloat and enable people to survive financial hardships, and that the time will soon come when families would no longer have to be apart. But since the ‘90s, Filipinos have lived like modern-day gypsies. Go to the ends of the earth, there’s a Filipino.
Due to severe shortage of local opportunities to make a decent living with the apparent failure of government and the private sector to sufficiently meet the ever-rising demand for jobs, millions of Filipinos have been compelled to bite the bullet and seek their fortunes elsewhere in the world.
Latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority showed that of the 2.29 million OFWs in 2018, around 1.26 million were in the Middle East or West Asia – in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Israel, Lebanon, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates.
The continuing exodus of Filipinos in search of greener pastures comes at a heavy price. Physical separation of parents from children and of husbands from wives led to rampant drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, infidelity and marital breakups, to name a few of the so-called “social costs” taking its toll on families of OFWs.
While advanced communications technology enables family members to be virtually in touch with each other, sociologists insist there is no substitute for constant physical presence of parents in exercising parental authority and guiding their children to be on the right track and strengthen the moral fiber binding families.
Apart from the social costs is the reality that our country is forfeiting its chances of competing globally in many fields, from science and medicine to master carpentry, due to the loss of human capital especially our skilled workers and best minds.
The need to come up with alternative domestic employment or livelihood opportunities, and make the economy less dependent on OFW remittances to keep it afloat, has become more pressing than ever. Calls have become louder for government to come up with measures and do everything necessary, with help from the private sector, to address the situation.
Among the necessary measures would be to accurately identify the places abroad where Filipino domestic workers are concentrated, who they are, from what areas in the Philippines do they come from, and then to strengthen creation of jobs and livelihood activities in these local areas.
Livelihood and employment would be boosted by strengthening our micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) which comprise almost 99 percent of all enterprises in our country and contribute an average of 61 percent of the total number of jobs.
Also, agricultural modernization and other efforts to strengthen the agricultural sector ought to be intensified to benefit the countryside where poverty incidence remains high. About two of every three poor Filipinos are in rural areas and are largely dependent on agricultural income and employment. Underemployment in agriculture is a persistent problem.
And there’s also a need to fully implement R.A. 7796 otherwise known as the Technical Education and Skills Development Act of 1994, for a more efficient system of providing training of manpower and facilitating employment at grassroots level. Its purpose is similar to that of the Laguna Employment and Manpower Development Council (LEMDC) which I organized in the province of Laguna when I was its governor in the late 1990s. LEMDC tackled unemployment and livelihood concerns and specifically pursued job creation efforts and training of unskilled workers for business enterprises in the province. The LEMDC concept and organizational structure later became the provincial template of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. Local governments, particularly the provinces, cities and municipalities, must pro-actively address employment and livelihood programs on their own, and not to wait for directions from the national government. This is in accordance with Sec. 16, R.A. 7160 or the Local Government Code of 1991. Further, there is also R.A. 10691 or the Public Employment Service Office (PESO) Act which can also help in assisting employment at the local level.
If relentlessly pursued, these aforementioned measures would be of tremendous help in finding alternatives for our OFWs and turning around the labor export policy entrenched for decades.
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