An advocacy group for migrant workers on Monday has urged the government to provide employment opportunities and livelihood assistance to the thousands of workers who would want to return and work in the country for good.
This was after an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) mother of the two-year-old child who died from battering arrived home last month to bury the son whom she left in the care of her nephew and the nephew’s wife while she worked abroad to provide for the family.
“It is high time for the national and local government to seriously give attention to OFW parents – both men and women – to enhance the existing programs of the existing agencies,” said Inorisa Silana-Elanto, representative of Mindanao Migrants Center for Empowering Actions, Inc. (MMCEAI).
She said that the new Overseas Workers Welfare Administration law or Republic Act 10801 which was enacted in May this year, can boost the government’s capacity to assist retrenched OFWs as reintegration program has been identified as one of the core programs of OWWA.
Silana-Elanto pointed out that the government must take proactive steps towards absorbing the returning workforce.
“While OWWA should be lauded for being prompt in exerting efforts to provide relief and taking action [in taking care of Cagalitan’s situation], the huge number of migrant workers still longing to go home to work in the Philippines and be with their family still poses a big challenge for the government,” said Silana-Elanto.
She pointed out that the reintegration program is not only for repatriated workers, but workers who also return for personal reasons.
“There’s no such thing as forever in being an OFW, you have to plan [the] coming back,” said Silana-Elantro, and that going abroad is not a jackpot.
She added that nobody wants to be away from our families, and there it’s a no-brainer choice really when it comes to working in the country and away from it.
MMCEAI is also supporting Erlinda Cagalitan, the mother of the two-year-old son, in her quest to win justice for her youngest son.
Erlinda’s call
Having had enough of being an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in Bahrain for 15 years, Erlinda Cagalitan, the mother of the two-year-old child who recently died from battering, now wants to stay home and personally take care of her two remaining children as long as she has a stable job locally.
Cagalitan said that she wants to have a simple employment in Davao City so that she will personally take care of her two remaining children and as long as it is a work that will sustain the needs of her family members.
“It is really not ideal if you have to leave your children and work in abroad – no mother would just simply want to be far from her children,” Cagalitan explained.
However, she still needs to return to Bahrain soon to finish her contract and that she does not have a work locally yet.
“I wish I already have a stable work here in Davao City, with the help of the government, as soon as I have finished my contract in Bahrain,” she hoped.
