President Duterte promised the creation of a separate department for overseas Filipino workers during his first State of the Nation Address. Recently, he resurrected that promise when he spoke before OFWs and their families at the “Araw ng Pasasalamat” celebration held in Camp Crame. Three senators have come forward to advocate for the new department, namely: Sens. Cynthia Villar, Imee Marcos and Christopher “Bong” Go. Senator Go expressed optimism that a law for this purpose would be enacted by December this year.
Millions of our modern-day heroes deserve a department they could call their own, given the size of their economic contributions to the country, and the challenges that they go through from point of recruitment and actual deployment to social and economic reintegration.
The following can be the gains in creating a separate department:
The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) will be able to devote 100 percent of its time and resources in addressing the concerns of our local work force, which is the bigger work force that is driving the engine of our economy.
Overlapping functions and budgetary redundancies given the plethora of agencies catering to OFWs would be eliminated leading to streamlined, cost-effective and simplified processes.
Accountability will be firmly established at the Cabinet level, with a secretary devoted solely to policies, plans and programs for Filipino migrants. Data collection and analysis will be purpose-driven in line with Neda’s AmBisyon Natin 2040 blueprint.
Welfare cases involving abused and exploited Filipinos overseas will be trimmed and more swiftly addressed regardless of whether the victim is undocumented or not.
Reintegration programs will be a priority, rather than an afterthought, thus offering our more senior OFWs the chance to come home as investors and/or entrepreneurs.
Incentive program can be put in place for top-notch, ethical recruitment agencies while swifter punitive actions are guaranteed for agencies that willfully violate Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) rules and the anti-trafficking law.
Unlike a department for housing or a department on information, communications and technology that deals with structures and bandwidths, an OFW department will deal with human beings on the move and their families left behind. Reckless policies could lead to job losses, confusion among stakeholders here and especially overseas and more workers leaving through the backdoor.
An OFW department can be a crossbreed between a globally attuned DFA and a welfare—as well as employment-oriented DOLE. It must not be too big and thus, cumbersome, because our lawmakers already have existing agencies that only need to be combined and placed under a single roof.
For example, the POEA and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), as attached agencies of DOLE, have their respective governing boards where representatives from the industry and workers’ sectors play a significant role. If you abolish these two institutions, those board seats would be gone, as well.
The proposed abolition of Owwa or having it folded in a new department would entail a co-mingling of funds, now hefty at P19 billion, a prospect that may prove unfair to its millions of members. Owwa has always been envisioned as a trust fund, and to my mind, it should remain to be so.
The new department should find ways to strengthen and enhance programs and benefits accruing to Owwa members, instead of Owwa funds being used as an excuse to make the creation of a new institution financially possible.
As a former labor undersecretary and given my family’s long history with the Philippine overseas employment program dating back to the days of Labor Secretary Blas F. Ople, I would urge the Senate and House leadership to agree to form a technical working group, bicameral in nature, to consider the creation of a new OFW department from both a parochial and global perspective. My fear is that in abolishing certain agencies, best practices honed over 40 years of overseas employment governance would also be lost.
Of course, the participation of the DFA through the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA) and the DOLE led by Secretary Silvestre Bello III are also of extreme importance. The DOLE and the DFA can be the “parents” of a third and new department, thus ensuring seamless cooperation and practical discussions on what the third institution ought to do.
I am sure that all this talk about a new department is making the employees of POEA, Owwa and the CFO jittery. They have unions that can and should be listened to. Our legislators also need to draw on the expertise of former labor secretaries and labor attaches, as well as former undersecretaries of DFA-OUMWA. Of course, the voices of its intended constituents, our OFWs from both the land-based and sea-based sectors, must also be heard.
Critics of a new OFW department say that its creation means that the government wants to make labor export a State policy and program. The State is not compelling our people to leave. Regardless of nationality, people go where the jobs are—regardless of how many or few agencies are in place to keep them out of harm’s way. All we can do is to manage labor migration in the best way possible.
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Susan V. Ople heads the Blas F. Ople Policy Center and Training Institute, a nonprofit organization that deals with labor and migration issues. She also represents the OFW sector in the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking.
