Dear Secretary Menardo Guevarra,
The overseas employment sector needs the Department of Justice’s help.
On March 22, the Blas F. Ople Policy Center headed by this writer and OFW advocate, humbly submitted a letter to your office seeking the DOJ’s legal opinion regarding the proper implementation of Republic Act (RA) 11641 or the Department of Migrant Workers Act signed into law on December 30, 2021.
My father, the late Ka Blas Ople, served our overseas workers with a pure heart dating back to his tenure as Secretary of Labor during the time of then President Ferdinand Marcos. I, too, have devoted more than half of my life in serving our overseas Filipino workers and studying the issues and concerns that affect them. The Ople Center sits in the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) as the non-government organization representative for the OFW sector, and as such, we also need some clarity to be able to accomplish our work.
Please settle the ongoing dispute, Sir.
In his version of the law’s implementing rules and regulations published last April 6 in two major newspapers, DMW Secretary Abdullah Mama-o included the following paragraphs under Rule XVII, Transitory and Miscellaneous Provisions, and I quote:
Transition Period. Within, or not later than, two years from the effectivity of this Act:
(a) Formulation shall be completed of the internal organic structure, staffing pattern, operating system, and revised budget of the Department whereby as the President’s Alter Ego for RA 11641, the Secretary heads the group tasked with producing the IRR, staffing pattern and 2023 budget, also known as the Transition Committee;
(b) Transfer shall be completed of the functions, assets, funds, equipment, properties, transactions, and personnel of all the merged agencies as enumerated in Section 19 of the Act, and
(c) Initial implementation of the law shall be done by the Secretary through the exercise of his self-executory plenary powers for supervision and control of the merged and subsumed agencies pursuant to Section 19 of the Act, consistent with the appropriations provided for in Section 26 of this Act.
Unless this IRR as published is duly withdrawn or replaced with another IRR, then Secretary Mama-o’s version will prevail.
If this IRR is in accordance with the law, then we have no problems with it. However, one of the framers of the DMW law, Senator Franklin Drilon, himself a former labor and justice secretary, has said that there is no office yet to be occupied by a Secretary because Section 23 paragraph C on the staffing pattern should first be fulfilled before a Department Secretary may be appointed.
He said, and I quote: “After a staffing pattern is submitted and approved, the Department Secretary may assume his position and become part of the Transition Committee, to take part in the discharge of its other functions.”
So, was the presidential appointment naming Secretary Mama-o as DMW Secretary premature? Because that is really the root of all this confusion, right? To be fair to Secretary Mama-o, he was handpicked by President Duterte to occupy this lofty position.
Under the law, as cited also in the published IRR, the Transition Committee “shall facilitate the complete and full operation of the Department which shall not be later than two years after the effectivity of the Act. It shall likewise promulgate the implementing rules and regulations necessary to effectively implement the smooth and orderly transfer to the Department of the subsumed agencies.”
The committee is composed of the DMW secretary, the undersecretary for migrant workers affairs of the DFA, the administrator of the POEA, the director of the International Labor Affairs Bureau of DOLE, the director of the National Reintegration Center for OFWs of OWWA, the director of the National Maritime Polytechnic of DOLE and the director of the Office of the Social Welfare Attaché of the DSWD. The DMW law is silent on who among these members should lead the committee.
Mr. Secretary, all six of these TransComm members, signed a letter addressed to Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea dated April 4, with the following subject: “Petition for the Nullification of the Implementing Rules and Regulations Issued by Secretary Abdullah Mama-o of the Department of Migrant Workers in Violation of the Provisions of RA 11641.”
Basically, the representatives of the six agencies or offices meant for consolidation into the new department and are official members of the Transition Committee have rejected the IRR published by Secretary Mama-o and his team. These committee members have submitted their own version of the IRR to the Office of the President.
From a war of memos, we now have a battle of the IRRs.
I am not a lawyer, nor do I pretend to have the public policy expertise to sort out this mess. But this, I know—without clarity, there can be no vision. Without vision, we perish. This tsunami of uncertainty must stop, and your legal opinion can and will help bring us all to safer ground.
Thank you for listening, Mr. Justice Secretary. I wish you well.
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.