Hailed as new heroes for bringing in billions of dollars a year to fuel
the growth of the Philippine economy, many overseas Filipino workers are, in
truth, martyrs for slaving abroad just to help their families survive back
home.
As of last count, there are about
12 million Filipinos—more than 10 per cent of the population—working in some
200 countries across the globe. In 2011, they sent home US$20.1 billion to the
families they left behind.
In the first half of 2012, OFW
remittances amounted to $10.13 billion. The amount for June was the highest on
record for any given month at $1.8 billion, which the Bangko Sentral ng
Pilipinas (central bank) said was due in part to the high global demand for
Filipino workers even as the world economy struggled with the dampening effect
of the economic crisis in Europe.
Yet behind these glowing figures
are the hardships, exploitation and other sufferings of OFWs whose distressing
accounts we are all too familiar with. Remember, for instance, the four
Filipinos who were executed in China for allegedly being drug mules, the abused
Filipino domestic helpers and many others embroiled in legal difficulties.
The labour export policy was
supposed to be a temporary solution to the economic crisis in the 1970s. The
dictator Ferdinand Marcos allowed the use of the country’s surplus labour
(basically the unemployed) for export to the oil-rich countries in the Middle
East. But this became a permanent component of the country’s labour policy with
the creation of the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) in 1982.
Government data showed that in
1972, the annual deployment of Filipino workers was only 14,366. This grew each
year and breached the one-million mark during the time of President Gloria
Arroyo, reaching 1.06 million in 2006 and 1.43 million in 2009.
The result is what Professor Mary
Lou Alcid of UP’s College of Social Work and Community Development described as
“transnational Filipino families”—the father in Saudi Arabia, the mother in
Hong Kong, the daughter in Taiwan, the brother in Dubai and the youngest left
in the Philippines.
The social cost of the
labour-export phenomenon is just enormous. Alcid cited illegal recruitment,
trafficking in women and children, contract violations, transgressions of human
rights, violence against women and an average of two to three people returning
to the country in boxes every year—not to mention its toll on the bodies, minds
and spirit of the workers themselves, their families, specially the children
who grow up without one or both parents; and of course the continuing loss, by
the thousands each year, of teachers, doctors, nurses, engineers and other
professionals.
These include the 22 weather
forecasters and observers who quit their jobs at the Philippine weather bureau
between 2005 and 2011 for better-paying jobs in the Middle East and Australia;
the 80 or so geologists who left the Department of Environment and Natural
Resources; and the dozens of pilots poached by foreign airlines from the local
flag carrier.
More disturbing is the fact that
the hazards of labour migration, various studies indicate, are greatest for
women, who are mostly relegated to the service sector and areas considered
traditional women’s work like housekeeping, caregiving, teaching and nursing.
POEA data showed that in 2010, of
the top 10 occupational categories of deployed land-based OFWs, domestic
helpers were number one, with women accounting for 98 per cent of those
deployed.
“The nature of their jobs is
inherently vulnerable. They live in their employers’ homes, work long hours
without breaks, and have difficulty accessing their rights. Many are subject to
abuse and exploitation as a result of living and working in a space that is so
difficult to regulate,” said the centre for Migrant Advocacy in a submission to
the UN Committee on Migrant Workers in April this year.
In his inaugural address on June
30, 2010, President Aquino said his administration’s goal “is to create jobs at
home so that there will be no need to look for employment abroad.”
Social scientists have found out
that the migration phenomenon is common among developing countries
transitioning from agricultural economies to industrialisation.
Four decades after the labour
export policy was adopted in the 1970s, the POEA is now “seriously considering”
a five-year phaseout programme on the deployment of domestic helpers. However,
the best expert advice we have found is that the government must start with the
understanding that labour exports will end only when the Philippines achieves economic
development, as what South Korea and Malaysia did.
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