The labor-recruitment sector has expressed its opposition to a circular issued by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), which prohibits interviews of household service workers (HSWs) by foreign principals or representatives of foreign recruitment agencies (FRAs).
The sector view the POEA circular as a virtual ban on HSW deployment.
Alfredo Palmiery, head of a Hong Kong recruiters association, told POEA Administrator Bernardo Olalia in a letter that preventing foreign principals or their agents from interviewing HSW applicants is a curtailment of the recruitment activities of licensed agencies.
The reason for the issuance circular was the increasing number of abuses on HSWs in the Middle East. However, Palmiery said that such abuses are not rampant in Hong Kong, or other parts of Asia and other developed countries.
The main purpose of foreign principals in coming to Manila is to personally select applicants for HSW to match the applicant for their clients. This is to prevent any mismatch of applicants to work, which may end up to the disadvantage of the workers themselves.
Sometimes this may end up in termination or repatriation.
Palmiery added that the letter of authority issued by the POEA was requested by agencies to replace the special working permits issued by the Bureau of Immigration (BI).
The industry negotiated with the BI that a letter of authority from the POEA would suffice for foreign principals to interview workers instead of the permit that has been the practice since 2001.
Numerous cases of arrests and extortion were reported agaisnt foreign principals before 2001, especially Japanese principals who were interviewing applicants for the entertainment industry.
Palmiery added that if the objective of the circular is to reduce the number of workers applying for work abroad, this will not happen.
“The government cannot stop Filipinos from working abroad to earn for their families,” he said.
The introduction of the HSW Reform package in 2006 aims to reduce the number of outbound HSWs. But the higher salary of $400 appeared to have attracted more applicants. HSW deployment has gone up since then, from 41,000 in 2007 to 205,000 in 2016.
The head of the recruitment agency said licensed agencies are partners of the government in combating illegal recruiters and human traffickers, and by imposing a ban on interviews and deployment will only aggravate the illegal trafficking of HSWs.
The industry also requested that prior consultation with the stakeholders should be the rule rather that the exception.
This has been the previous practice of former administrators to promote good and harmonious relations with the recruitment industry.