Senator Joel Villanueva said the establishment of a Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) would put illegal recruiters and fixers who prey on hapless overseas Filipino workers seeking employment ‘’out of business.’’
As principal sponsor and author of Republic Act (RA) 11461, Villanueva said the DMW law has been crafted to eliminate the “nooks and crannies” where fixers and illegal recruiters thrive to victimize hapless Filipinos seeking to provide a decent living to their families and loved ones.
Villanueva, chairman of the Senate Labor committee, said illegal recruiters and fixers not only victimize our countrymen but also their dreams for their facilities. He pointed out that would-be Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) from the provinces need not go to Metro Manila to process their travel papers or seek assistance as there would be fully operational regional offices for the DMW serving as one-stop shop centers for workers headed overseas.
RA No. 11461 also “provides clear parameters for ethical recruitment, which is the lawful hiring of workers in fair and transparent manner that respects and protects their dignity and human rights to protect our OFWs from abuses and exploitation,” Villanueva explained, making the Philippines among the first signatories to the UN Global Compact on Migration to include an express provision on ethical recruitment.
Ethical recruitment covers the accreditation of foreign principals and employers, as well as the licensing and regulation of their counterpart recruitment agencies in the country to eliminate cases of contract violation and substitution, among the many kinds of abuse suffered by OFWs.
Villanueva also pointed out that the proposed department would also create a blacklist of persons and agencies involved in human trafficking to stamp out illegal recruiters out of business.
"But more than getting rid of opportunities for illegal recruiters and fixers to prey on OFWs, our government's priority continues to be the creation of jobs here in our country. Working overseas should be by choice and not by necessity," Villanueva said.
Data from the labor department showed that the government only managed to secure two illegal recruitment convictions each in 2019 and 2020 despite the hundreds of cases endorsed to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for prosecution.
Villanueva also cited the situation in the Middle East, where the numerous cases of rape and sexual abuse reached 240 in 2020 alone. In the same year, the government recorded 4,302 maltreatment cases of OFWs in the same year, while contract violation and substitution cases reached 21,265 cases.