BETTER DAYS
Senator Sonny Angara
Filipino families reunited during the holidays. For many, it was the first opportunity to be with each other again since the pandemic started in 2020. It was sweeter for many Overseas Filipino Workers, or OFWs, who toiled abroad despite the threat of Covid-19. The lifting of travel restrictions in almost all parts of the world allowed them to come home. The loosened borders in fact resulted last month in a two-year high number of travelers to the Philippines, composed mostly of Overseas Filipinos, including OFWs, as reported by the Bureau of Immigration. On Christmas day alone, 30,000 arrived.
In addition to the smiles and the pasalubongs our OFWs brought, it was their labor and remittances that buoyed the Philippine economy amid disproportionate foreign exchange rates and a global market plagued by high inflation. Preliminary data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) show that Overseas Filipinos’ remittances from January to October 2022 peaked at $26.7 billion, growing by 3.1 percent as compared to the same period last 2021 at $25.9 billion. The National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) and other economists expect remittances to hit a “yearly high” by the end of the year that would boost consumer spending, which approximately account for 70 percent of the economy, and help prop the Philippine peso against US Dollar.
There are several fronts however where our OFWs are being challenged. One of them is the rising cost of living, which in turn dampens the benefits of increased remittances. A recent survey by a London-based remittance firm disclosed that the cost of living of remittances’ beneficiaries worldwide has gone up, where almost half or 45 percent of those who remit said they now only send money to immediate family, rather than friends and distant relatives, and that their households are set to revisit their spending habits due to inflation.
The second is the reported lack of access to social protection programs. A paper by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) found that our modern-day heroes are not sufficiently covered by social protection schemes or insurance such as those offered by the Social Security System (SSS), the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS), the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth), and other health insurance programs.
The same PIDS study identified specific Filipino migrant workers who are likely to be not covered by social protection or insurance, particularly those with lower educational attainment; workers belonging to poorer households or the lowest income quintile; individuals working in skilled agricultural, forestry, and fishery works including those employed in elementary occupations; migrant workers employed in Malaysia, Lebanon, and Bahrain; women migrant workers; and those directly hired by employers or who did not need a visa or used a tourist visa upon entry or those without written contracts.
Moreover, the study emphasized that only 53 percent of all workers have health insurance or medical allowance. The most common benefits received by OFWs in their first migration experience were those serving their immediate on-site needs instead of programs considered as safety nets such as health insurance, overtime pay, paid sick leave, work accident compensation, among others.
The authors of the paper, namely Dr. Audrey D. Tabuga, Anna Rita P. Vargas, and Maria Blesila D. Mondez, recommended that there should be initiatives to improve the accessibility of social protection programs especially for vulnerable OFWs and that the current processes in obtaining the overseas employment certificate (OEC) must be revisited to ensure that all outbound migrant workers have ample opportunity to enroll in social protection.
Indeed, OFWs, our country’s unsung heroes, who work abroad and far away from their families should not be left without adequate social protection as this condition makes them vulnerable to economic shocks and unforeseen job disruptions while they are deployed. I filed Senate Resolution No. 31 that directs the appropriate Senate Committee to conduct an inquiry on this particular issue to identify specific interventions to preserve and promote their welfare. This is a problem that must not be overlooked considering that there are at least 1.8 million OFWs deployed worldwide according to the latest Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data.
While the government is already taking the correct strides towards advancing the rights and interests of OFWs when it created the Department of Migrant Workers, it must not let up its campaign of providing adequate safeguards to all Filipino migrant workers who have been severely hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and the recent string of high inflation rates.
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(Senator Sonny Angara has been in public service for 18 years — nine years as Representative of the lone district of Aurora, and nine as Senator. He has authored, co-authored, and sponsored more than 330 laws. He is currently serving his second term in the Senate.)