THE Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) is seeing an upward trend in the deployment of Filipino migrant workers after total deployment last year returned to the above-1 million mark following a two-year downtrend.
DMW Secretary Susan Ople on Thursday disclosed that the number of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) deployed last year grew by an annualized rate of 62.8 percent to 1.2 million from 2021.
Publicly available government data shows that the estimated number of OFWs deployed in 2021 was about 741,000.
The latest 2022 figures mark the first year since 2020 that OFW deployment breached the 1-million level, based on government data.
“After two years of a 75-percent decrease in development numbers, we are steadily recovering. There were 1.2 million OFWs deployed last year, an increase of 62.8 percent from 2021,” Ople said in her speech during an event at the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).
“For the first quarter of this year, the deployment increased by 54.8 percent compared to the same quarter last year,” Ople added.
Ople also disclosed that the DMW will expand globally the implementation of the Pinansyal na Talino at Kaalaman or PiTaKa program, which seeks to improve OFWs’ financial literacy.
The DMW signed a memorandum of agreement with the BSP and the BDO Foundation for the continued implementation of the PiTaKa program.
BSP noted that the program aims to teach OFWs “how to save, manage their savings, get out of debt, and make prudent investments to achieve financial stability.”
“The program recognizes the temporary nature of overseas employment and encourages families of OFWs to support their loved ones abroad by spending remittances prudently, limiting liabilities, and growing family income,” it said.
Ople said the DMW will now require its migrant workers offices (MWO) abroad to deploy the PiTaKa program to reach and train more OFWs. At present, only the Pre-Departure Orientation Seminar (PDOS) providers are implementing the PiTaKa program.
“We will now require all our migrant workers offices around the world to do the same. So, the program will not just reach the OFW families here but also the OFWs abroad while waiting for their repatriation,” she added.
Ople said DMW plans to translate the modules and learning videos of the PiTaKa program to other Philippine dialects so that OFWs would understand them better and easier.
“We will also use social media like TikTok to further share [the PiTaKa program],” she said.
“The project successfully trained 900,000 OFWs. If we are sending more than a million, I think we can increase that number upward,” she added.
Image credits: Nonie Reyes