When your major source of revenues is human resources fielded overseas, it is just right to ensure your assets are safe and the industry guarded.
There is no question the Philippines rely heavily on the remittances of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). They are the virtual cash cows of this nation. Imagine this, around 6,000 Filipinos leave to work overseas every single day. That’s how massive the country’s import is in terms of human resources. However, seeing them leave the country and expect remittances in return is just one side of the story. In fact, that is only the by-product. The more telling stories lie in how those OFWs landed an opportunity overseas.
Which bring us to the matter on how to secure a job overseas. These OFWs and their families spend huge sums of money to spend for all the required fees. It also took a lot of time for paperwork and for travelling from hometowns to the city to process their documents. That is assuming everything is done right and handled legally. But there’s the bigger possibility for prospective OFWs to be duped by illegal recruitment schemes and lose that hard-earned money.
That is the hard truth of being an OFW or would-be OFW.
According to government data, illegal recruitment continues to be a scorn among workers notwithstanding the fact that the Philippine have ample laws in place to curb illegal recruitment. In 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) reported a total of 1,567 illegal recruitment cases excluding cases that have either been dropped or not reported at all. The fact remains that many OFWs have fallen prey at the hands of exploitative recruitment agencies that make false promises about their employment abroad, impose exorbitant fees for their services thus trapping workers in debt, and even withholding their passports while abroad.
Campaigning overseas in the 2016 elections, President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies like now Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, saw for themselves the real faces of being an OFW. Both President Duterte and Senator Go now want a separate Department of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). The President even went to the extent of saying he wants it in place by December. Go has since filed a bill creating the Department of OFW in the Senate. The proposed department will eliminate recruitment by private agencies which have been the source of recruitment scams victimizing several thousands of OFWs.
Currently, separate government agencies handle OFW affairs, among them the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, and the Department of Foreign Affairs’ Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs.
With a separate agency solely functioning for the purpose of handling recruitment and issuance of permits to work overseas, the landscape is bound to change and the days of illegal recruitment numbered.
