UN declares Dec. 18 Int’l Migrants Day

BAGUIO CITY (Dec. 16) — In recognition of the rights and welfare of all overseas Filipino workers (OFW) and their families, the United Nations officially declared December 18 of every year as the International Migrants Day.

According to Flora Belinan, chairperson of Migrante-Metro Baguio, OFWs are the top dollar earners, remitting more than US$10 billion every year. This figure could even double if all OFW’s were documented and if all the remittances passed through legal channels. This is what has kept the Philippine economy afloat. The rise in the remittances could be attributed to the high deployment abroad of most of our educated and skilled professionals i.e. teachers, health workers, nurses and most recently, doctors who took up nursing as a second course in order to facilitate easier employment abroad. Our professionals seek employment abroad as factory workers, domestic helpers, caregivers and in other blue-collar jobs. The main reason is due to low wages and lack of opportunities here in the country. The more professionals leave the country, the more we have to face the problem of brain drain, most especially the effects on our education system and health care systems.

The huge amount that our OFWs contribute to our coffers every end of the year is what elates President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo elated. However, the more we send workers abroad, the economy is all the more unable to support its population by creating decent and long-term jobs. Furthermore, the social cost of having separated families and hundreds of thousands of unsolved cases of human rights violations—maltreatment, physical, psychological and sexual abuses—involving OFW’s are increasing yearly because of government negligence and implied towards the plight of our OFW’s.

For the OFWs, the government has long abandoned its responsibility to promote and protect the rights and welfare of OFWs and their families. It is a shame that GMA is even encouraging more Filipinos to work abroad under the Labor Export Policy to gain more profit, added Belinan.

Our economy is deprived of the spillover effect of having one million-labor force creating wealth within the country. Instead, one million of our productive labor force is creating wealth in their host countries.

This desperate situation will remain unless our government will have the political will to create decent jobs in the Philippines to uphold the life of every Filipino. # via NORDIS