Stakeholders on Friday launched the country’s first Overseas Filipino Worker Watch Mobile App that sought to make life more livable for the country’s 10-million OFWs abroad by providing them with a mobile and social networking technology with which they could access to help protect themselves.
“Help will be just a click away,” said Myrna Padilla, chief executive officer of the Davao-based Mynd Consulting. “We may be a nation of OFWs but we are not helpless.”
The innovative technology is a joint undertaking between Padilla’s company and the Department of Labor and Employment and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration.
She said the technology sought to take advantage of the technical savvy of most OFWs who have mastered the use of smartphones and social networking technology to communicate with their families back home.
Through the ‘volunteer switch’ function of the technology, volunteers in the network would be able to receive alerts in case an OFW is in trouble, thereby alerting other OFWs within the vicinity.
Another feature, the “Emergency SOS” button, provides OFWs an avenue to report concerns of abuse or mistreatment.
Other features include an OWWA-provided work journal for OFWs to record working conditions. The OFW can post status updates, photos and videos, to include situations involving distressed OFWs—monitored remotely by DOLE, OWWA and the Philippine Overseas Labor Office.
Party List Rep. Aniceto Bertiz said recruitment agencies will be required to install the technology into the smart phones of all the OFWs processed by their offices.
Labor undersecretary Joel Maglungsod said the technology addresses the problem on how to monitor millions of OFWs abroad.
“Hopefully, it may help reduce instances of abuse suffered by our countrymen abroad,” he said.
He described the technology as part of the social dialog between government and the OFWs who are spread out all over globe.
Padilla, herself a former domestic worker, said the OFW Watch Mobile App provides a bayanihan solution to the problems and risks faced by OFWs abroad.
“Now with this App, they are just a click away from assistance,” she said.
Vice-Mayor Bernie Al-ag said the introduction of the app to a global audience is a welcome development. “We are committed to helping promote, help and protect this technology,” he said.
