ROME MIGRANTE COUNTER SONA

By Belarmino Dabalos Saguing, Rome Italy 24.07.2013 0013 ICT

Aquino's SONA is but a collection of recycled rhetorics and lies.

As predicted, this year’s SONA by the president trumpeted the economic growth. But not mentioned is the fast widening gap between the rich and the poor. Even the government’s  National Statistic Coordination Board (NSCB) reveals that high-income group enjoyed a 10.4% annual income growth in 2011 while middle income group got only 4.3% growth and low-income group 8.2%. The last three years saw rising unemployment and poverty, and the fast-rising of prices. He also failed or choose not to mention the OFWs.

The people faced and still facing the incessant increases in prices of utilities like water and electricity and oil. And Aquino is not moving a finger to stop it.

The number of poor and hungry people has multiplied due to growing unemployment. The economic growth the the administration is boasting about is meaningless for the people. While the rate rates of basic commodities spirals skywards the substancial wage increase being asked by the workers has not been heard or plainly ignored. Through the PPP, Social services including health services and public hospitals are being privatized.

The government’s sole solution to poverty is the CCT dole-outs. It cannot lift millions of poor from the mire of poverty.

“The so-called economic growth has benefited only the few ruling elite. While the people go hungry, the rulers feast on congressional pork and reap profits from privatization schemes. 

All these shortcomings only tend to multiply the numbers of OFWs as millions of jobless people are trying to scape the situation by trying to find alternatives overseas.

In its three years in office, the Aquino administration has recorded the biggest number of OFW (overseas Filipino worker) deployment since the labor export policy was implemented in the 1970s.

President Benigno Aquino III’s mid-term in office can only be characterized by the further intensifi cation of a labor export policy that has become more sophisticated, more aggressive and more detrimental to the rights and welfare of Filipino migrants and their families.

As of June 2012, 4,884 OFWs have been leaving the Philippines on a daily basis (Source: IBON Foundation). This is a far cry from the 2,500 OFWs per day record when Aquino assumed offi ce in 2010 (Department of Labor and Employment, DOLE).

These figures make the Aquino administration’s claims of a “reverse migration” phenomenon  exceedingly incomprehensible. 

In May, DOLE Sec. Rosalinda Baldoz announced that OFWs are opting to return to the country because “more industrial sectors are catching up in terms of labor package and training”. 

The Aquino government attributes a “reverse migration” in the offi ng to the 7.8 percent GDP growth in the first quarter of 2013 – the highest in Aquino’s term. However, independent think-tank IBON Foundation ascribes the growth to election-spending during the fi rst two quarters of 2012, and other factors that belie any claims of the Aquino government of sustainable, comprehensive and inclusive growth.

Distressed OFWs swarming in Philippine Embassy, Riyadh 

Of course, the Aquino administration would like to stay mum on the true situation of OFWs abroad. These past three years saw the worst  times for OFWs in terms of protection from abuse and maltreatment both from foreign employers and abuses from government agencies posted in the Philippine embassies and consulates, particularly in the Middle East.

For the fi rst time in history, four Filipinos were executed abroad under one presidency. The number of Filipinos on death row has increased from 108 to at least 125 (Migrante database). At least 7,000 Filipinos are languishing in jails abroad without legal assistance and at least 25,000 are stranded and awaiting repatriation in the Middle East alone.

In his three years, Aquino failed to address the immediate evacuation and repatriation of OFWs affected by conflicts, calamities and crackdowns in the MENA region. The so-called “one-country” team approach of the DFA, DOLE and OWWA is non-functional, and is usually characterized by the said agencies blaming each other for lapses and inaction in the urgent repatriation of and assistance for OFWs in distress.

The most recent “sex-for-flight” exposè, for instance, is an exploitation borne out of the Aquino government’s failure to address stranded OFWs’ demands for “free, urgent and mass repatriation”. Abuse of OFWs by erring embassy and consulate offi cials have long been rampant and usually intensify during crisis events, such as crackdowns on undocumented OFWs in the Middle East.

Abusive embassy and consulate officials take advantage of the desperation of OFWs in distress. The “sex-for-fl ight” issue is not an isolated matter that has nothing to do with the overall condition of stranded OFWs seeking immediate repatriation from the Aquino government in light of the Middle East crackdowns.

Of present, thousands of stranded OFWs in the Middle East continue to call for immediate repatriation from the Philippine government. Efforts, so far, have been slow and uncertain. Only some 250 stranded OFWs have been repatriated by the Aquino government since June. With only a few days remaining before the resumption of the Saudi crackdowns on July 3, the Aquino government might be facing a tremendous nightmare as at least 4,500 undocumented OFWs are still awaiting repatriation in Riyadh and Jeddah alone.

Some 12,000 OFWs are undocumented and in danger of arrests in the whole of Saudi Arabia.Failure to repatriate the stranded OFWs in time will defi nitely result in more and graver human rights abuses against stranded OFWs.

The Aquino government has also failed in curbing human and labor traffi cking of OFWs. The Philippines remains as one of the top source/sending countries for human traffi cking in different parts of the world.

Filipinos, mostly women and children, are being traffi cked for labor and/or sexual trade to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, South Africa, North America and Europe.

The Aquino government conservatively estimates the number of Filipino victims of traffi cking from 300,000 to 400,000, with the number of children victims ranging from 60,000 to 100,000.

Many of them migrate to work through legal and illegal means but are later coerced into exploitative conditions, drug trade or white slavery. The situation has become so alarming that the US government, for altruistic reasons, had warned the Philippine government to get its act together lest it remains under Tier 2 of the US Department of State’s Traffi cking in Persons Report.

This year, the Aquino regime pursued cosmetic reforms, among them signing the Expanded Anti-Traffi cking in Persons Act, which upgraded the Philippines to Tier 1, meaning that the country has complied with the minimum standards for the elimination of traffi cking.

The 2003 Anti-Traffi cking in Persons Act, otherwise known as Republic Act 9208, defi nes “traffi cking of persons” as the “recruitment, transportation, transfer or harboring, or receipt of persons with or without the victim’s consent or knowledge, within or across national borders by means of threat or use of force, or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or of position, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the person, or, the giving or receiving of payments or benefi ts to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation which includes at a minimum, the exploitation or the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, slavery, servitude or the removal or sale of organs.”

Direct services for OFWs from concerned agencies, namely specifi c items under the DFA, DOLE, POEA, Department of Justice (DOJ) as lead agency of the IACAT, Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) and the Offi ce of the President (OP), were decreased. Budget for OFW welfare and services in the said agencies suffered an 18 percent cut (P792 million) from 2011’s sum of P3.8 million. This translated to a pitiful per capita spending of P261.83 for the 15 million overseas Filipinos.

Moreover, while funds for welfare and services for OFWs decreased, increases were made on the DOLE and POEA budgets mainly for their “marketing and job placement” purposes – despite declarations from Aquino from past SONAs that these agencies would focus on local job generation and more incentives for returned OFWs to address forced migration. One major consequence of budget  cuts on OFWs direct services and welfare was the closure of ten embassies, consulates and posts in different countries around the world. As of July 31, 2012, embassies in Caracas in Venezuela; Koror, Palau; Dublin, Ireland and consulates general in Barcelona, Spain and Frankfurt, Germany have ceased to operate. Embassies in Stockholm, Sweden; Bucharest, Romania; Havana, Cuba; Helsinki, Finland; and consulate in Saipan in Northern Mariana Islands closed down on October 31, 2012.

State exactions

Under Aquino’s term, state exactions from OFWs were further institutionalized and aggravated through the Aquino’s signing of Administrative Order 31. AO 31 legalizes state exactions and taxation on OFWs by effectively calling on all government heads and agencies to “rationalize the rates of their fees and charges, increase their rates and impose new fees and charges.”

###