Senior labor officials who attended the first organizational meeting and public hearing of the Senate labor committee wilted in the face of a succession of questions from the senators regarding the creation of a new department for overseas Filipinos.
Sen. Joel Villanueva, as chairman of the labor committee, presided over the hearing with Senators Francis Tolentino, Franklin Drilon, Nancy Binay, Sherwin Gatchalian, and Koko Pimentel present. Invited as resource persons were presidential adviser on OFW and Muslim Affairs Abdullah Mamao, Labor Undersecretaries Ric Ebarle, Ciriaco Lagunzad (currently the acting secretary), Claro Arellano and Jing Paras, CFO Undersecretary Astravel Pimentel, Undersecretary Edwin Bael, and top officials of the POEA and OWWA. There were also representatives from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the private sector, as well as other NGOs.
Sen. Franklin Drilon of the minority bloc, a former labor secretary, quizzed the labor undersecretaries on the nature of the trust fund being administered by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. When one of the undersecretaries cited the lack of repatriation funds under OWWA to service its members, the veteran senator explained why this is so.
Senator Drilon stressed that OWWA is a trust fund of the workers, and is membership-based, so its funds should not be used for general repatriation. The funding for repatriation services can be found in the national budget through the Assistance to Nationals Fund managed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, the senator said.
He also stressed that OWWA, and by extension, DOLE, has been functioning well and that there was really no need to legislate a separate department for overseas Filipinos. He said that the P19-billion trust fund of the OWWA must be preserved and protected considering that these are workers’ funds being administered by the national government. Acting Labor Secretary Lagunzad voiced his personal opinion that the present setup of OWWA should be maintained.
When asked by Senator Villanueva on why the labor department is now suddenly supportive of bills creating a separate department considering its original stance that there was no need for it, Undersecretary Lagunzad said that their new position was brought about by a recent “enlightenment.” When Senator Binay asked the undersecretary to elaborate, the answer she got was quite vague.
This exchange led Senator Tolentino to question the DOLE’s seeming reluctance to embrace the President’s directive to support the creation of a new department to serve migrant Filipinos. He reminded the resource persons that carving out new institutions from old ones has been done in the past. He recalled that the present Department of Agriculture used to be part of the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, which was later on split into two major institutions.
The Commission on Filipinos Overseas represented by Undersecretary Pimentel-Naik lamented that the CFO was not included in the consultations held by the labor department on the proposed department. This prompted the senators to direct the DOLE to include the CFO and the DFA in its consultations considering that the CFO has its own constituency of Filipinos residing abroad.
A few minutes before adjournment, Labor Undersecretary Jing Paras sought the chair’s permission to speak. He clarified that the DOLE fully supports the President’s directive in the State of the Nation Address for the creation of a separate department to cater to Filipinos overseas. This led Senator Villanueva, in his capacity as committee chair, to ask that the DOLE be more prepared in the next hearing.
What I heard as one of the invited resource persons in yesterday’s
(Monday) hearing was an orchestra of discordant voices emanating from within
the DOLE. I somehow understand their predicament—putting together a position
paper on the amputation of your own department is quite a daunting and painful
task. There is merit in having an interagency technical group that would handle
this painful task together because the clamor to have a new department is real,
and heartfelt, from among millions of
overseas workers.
That sentiment, however, is not enough. From a policy perspective, the decision to create a new department must be evidence-based, structurally defined, and purpose-driven. Let the numbers speak for themselves. Those numbers reside in DOLE, specifically the POEA and OWWA.
For Filipinos abroad that did not go through the POEA, the agencies that have primary knowledge about their needs and numbers would be the DFA and the CFO. Unless these three agencies meet and share their views about pending bills creating a new department for Filipino migrants, then how can the executive branch offer fair and much-needed “enlightenment”?
No less than Senator Vilanueva expressed disappointment in the DOLE’s performance. “I hope DOLE gets its act together, consult all stakeholders and all relevant government agencies.” He said he would not want a repeat of the outcome of the Security of Tenure bill, which was vetoed after three years of hearings, because of the objections of one agency.
As I said in the Senate hearing, the Philippine overseas employment program is more than 40 years old.
The upside in all these discussions on whether to create a separate department for OFWs is that it is forcing all of us to look at the mirror and contemplate the future of labor migration and migration governance. This is the kind of discussion that, though divisive and emotional, needs to happen for the sake of millions of Filipinos overseas and the families they have left behind.