Charging OFWs more won't stop recession

IT is unfortunate that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo thinks that collecting more fees from overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), raising electricity rates and imposing more sin taxes will provide the government with a way out of its current fiscal crisis.

Malacañang recently announced the formation of the Office of External Affairs (OEA) whose main function is supposedly to develop livelihood programs for OFWs. Already it has announced plans to charge every OFW an additional 20 dollars apiece to help fund its activities. Migrante, the activist group that lobbies for the rights of migrant workers, quickly slammed the proposal.

"The programs of the OEA have no intention of serving the OFWs as well as the Filipino masses. The only interest of these programs is to forcibly collect another 20 dollars from their hard-earned remittances to earn more profits from OFWs," said Connie Bragas-Regalado, the chairperson of Migrante.

Indeed, many observers have questioned the suitability of forming yet another body that only duplicates the work already being done by other government bodies such as the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and the Presidential Commission on Overseas Filipinos.

Some have speculated that it looks like political payback to left-wing activists who supported President Arroyo in her election bid earlier this year. Ed Pamintuan and Poe Gratela are heading the OEA, and both were instrumental in backing the president during her campaign.

Migrante launched a blistering attack on Gratela, denouncing him as a stooge of the Arroyo administration, and disclaiming any links to the former head of the activist group.

"Poe Gratela is no longer a member of Migrante International," said Bragas-Regalado. "He was the former chairperson of Migrante, but he resigned last November to serve the anti-migrant Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during her presidential election. Being corrupt and opportunist, Mr. Gratela cannot be recognized and trusted by millions of OFWs around the world."

Adding to the woes of OFWs, the Department of Foreign Affairs has announced that the fees for new passports will be increased from 500 pesos to 1,100 pesos to help cover the costs of introducing new, biometric-enabled, machine readable passports.

The migrant workers group Kabataan ng Migranteng Pilipino para sa Bayan (Kamiyan) immediately denounced the increase in passport fees, saying the 120-percent hike in processing fees was unjust and an additional burden for OFWs.

"The government has to understand that even before an OFW leaves our country for work overseas, the government already rakes in billions of pesos from them in the form of extractions and fees," said Mac Ramirez, the undersecretary general of Kamiyan, in a press statement.

The Kamiyan estimates that the average OFW needs to get 76 signatures on documents from various government bodies, and spend 16,000 pesos to process his papers, in order to work abroad. The breakdown of fees is as follows: 7,600 pesos for the 76 signatures at 100 pesos each; the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration processing fee of $100; passport fee of 500 pesos; mandatory Overseas Workers Welfare Administration membership fee of $25 and Medicare fee of 900 pesos.

The Department of Foreign Affairs claims that the new biometric passports will help speed the passage of OFWs through foreign immigration checkpoints, but the Kamiyan disputes that, claiming that Filipinos abroad will still be viewed with suspicion because of the stereotype that they will overstay their visas and work illegally.

Add to this grab bag of increases in fees the fact that President Arroyo is determined to raise power rates, despite the Philippines already having the most expensive electricity in Asia, and one wonders how the average Filipino family is supposed to survive financially.
Adding to fees that OFWs are obligated to pay, such as the proposed OEA fee of 20 dollars, will hardly help the government pay down its debt of 3.36 trillion pesos. Instead, it will just serve to further rile the millions of Filipinos working abroad whose yearly remittances of at least 10 billion dollars help keep the economy afloat.
President Arroyo should scrap the OEA if the government doesn't have the money to fund it, and find other jobs for Pamintuan and Gratela. Forcing OFWs to pay for it is not the way to do it.

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THE NEWS this week that the Department of Labor and Employment has issued an order ending the services of locally hired personnel working for labor attachés at Philippine embassies and consulates abroad came as surprise for many.
Working as translators, caseworkers, drivers and general all-round fixers to help OFWs who get into trouble abroad, these locally hired Filipinos have traditionally complained of receiving lower salaries than career government employees deployed from Manila.

When the labor attaché in Riyadh was interviewed about the sackings, he denied that the employees were being fired, and said that their contracts would not be renewed after they expire at the end of December. To me that sounds like they are being let go, or fired.

Ambassador Bahnarim Guinomla denied having had prior knowledge of the sackings when I called him this week, and also denied that the local hires were being let go for alleged corruption.

OFWs have long complained of being shaken down by some unscrupulous employees at Filipino diplomatic missions around the globe, and with 800,000 Filipinos in Saudi Arabia, one can be sure that a good amount of corruption was present here too.

One can only hope that the allegedly better-paid employees who are coming from Manila will be less vulnerable to corruption, and will be better poised to help OFWs in distress.

Comments or questions? E-mail the author at rasheed@arabnews.com