Senator Alan Peter Cayetano (davaotoday.com file photo)
DAVAO CITY, Philippines—Philippine Senator Alan Peter Cayetano expressed support for the abolition of policies that burden the Overseas Filipino Workers.
“Let’s spare our modern-day heroes from these inconveniences. We need to ease their burdens by abolishing these unwarranted government policies and replacing them with seamless, convenient, and hassle-free systems. Let’s make our OFWs feel like VIPs,” Cayetano said in a statement Wednesday.
Cayetano was referring to the Overseas Employment Certificate and the collection of terminal fees—the same policies that were raised by some 200 OFWs in Hongkong when they protested outside the office of the Philippine Consulate General over the weekend.
The protest rally was led by the United Filipinos in Hong Kong (UNIFIL-MIGRANTE-HK) as they the claimed that the procedure introduced by the Department of Labor and Employment for securing the OEC in order to earn a refund of the terminal fee led to a “chaotic system that caused missed flights, long queues, fixers, and unnecessary expenses.”
“By law, migrant workers are exempted from paying the terminal fee. But since it is included in the ticket prices, they still have to line up to get refunds, which at times even causes missed flights,” he said.
For Migrante International Garry Martinez, the government’s OEC was a “money-making scheme by the government.
They urged President Rodrigo Duterte to abolish the OEC permanently.
The OEC is a requirement for every OFW who leaves the country. For new hires, the OEC will not be issued unless they pay a compulsory plethora of fees for every contract processed.
“With the increases in Philhealth premium, NBI clearance fees, e-Passport fees, barangay clearance fees, mandatory contributions to Pag-Ibig, OWWA and the mandatory insurance, among other requirements, the average cost for every newly-hired OFW for the issuance of the OEC has more than doubled during the last six years,” Martinez said in a statement back in August last year.
A study by Migrante International showed that every newly-hired OFW shells out an average of Php30,000 in the processing of documents. This amount ballooned from 2010’s average cost of P18,000 per new contract.
From the OEC alone, the government earns a whopping P65.7 billion, or P180 million a day, from various processing fees and state exactions on OFWs, according to the group.
“State exactions have caused OFWs and their families to become debt-ridden, contributing greatly to the widespread landlessness and poverty of many. It is not unheard of for peasant families to mortgage or sell their small parcels of land or to submit their children to unpaid labor just to be able to pay debtors or produce the sum needed to pay for exorbitant pre-departure and placement fees,” Martinez said. (davaotoday.com)
