Posted by Belarmino Dabalos Saguing
Rome, Italy 13 April 2015
a repost of note by Bill Saguing on 27 Dec. 2011
THE Department of Labor and Employment on Tuesday urged Filipinos working in Syria to come home, saying that there are high-paying jobs awaiting them. She added that the government will assist overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) repatriated from Syria.
“If they remained in the country, we could better protect them. It will also minimize the social cost of being away from their homeland which could be higher in vulnerable occupations like domestic work,” she added.
DOLE Secretary Baldoz enumerated the government programes that could be availed by the returning OFWs.
Under the Balik-Pinay, Balik-Hanap-buhay Program, the National Reintegration Center for OFWs (NRCO) of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, an attached agency of the DOLE, a P10,000 livelihood/business development assistance is given to returning women workers.
The experience of OFWs who returned from Libia gives a discouraging note: the jobs referred to by the DOLE is hard to have if there is one available or not available at all. Dole explained that they are not placement bureau and the worker has to avail what is there, otherwise one has to wait (or to look somewhere else) . the P10,000 assistance is not even enough to get the preliminary necessities to start a small sarisari store and won't last a few weeks.
It seems that DOLE is doing a leg pull or has gone nuts. Protect the workers when they cannot even guarantee the protection of the rights of the workers in the Philippines who has to vie with each other for a job. Where locallly employed workers is losing whatever right left for them which they are losing one by one due to corruption and contractualization of employers in the Philippines
No!. It appears that Sec. Baldoz is talking out of realities. Promising something that recent history has proven to be unreachavle under the present conditions. The only alternative for returning OFWs is to look for another job abroad.
Good paying jobs in the Philippines is as an unreachable dream. So the diaspora continue.
“If they remained in the country, we could better protect them. It will also minimize the social cost of being away from their homeland which could be higher in vulnerable occupations like domestic work,” she added.
DOLE Secretary Baldoz enumerated the government programes that could be availed by the returning OFWs.
Under the Balik-Pinay, Balik-Hanap-buhay Program, the National Reintegration Center for OFWs (NRCO) of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, an attached agency of the DOLE, a P10,000 livelihood/business development assistance is given to returning women workers.
The experience of OFWs who returned from Libia gives a discouraging note: the jobs referred to by the DOLE is hard to have if there is one available or not available at all. Dole explained that they are not placement bureau and the worker has to avail what is there, otherwise one has to wait (or to look somewhere else) . the P10,000 assistance is not even enough to get the preliminary necessities to start a small sarisari store and won't last a few weeks.
It seems that DOLE is doing a leg pull or has gone nuts. Protect the workers when they cannot even guarantee the protection of the rights of the workers in the Philippines who has to vie with each other for a job. Where locallly employed workers is losing whatever right left for them which they are losing one by one due to corruption and contractualization of employers in the Philippines
No!. It appears that Sec. Baldoz is talking out of realities. Promising something that recent history has proven to be unreachavle under the present conditions. The only alternative for returning OFWs is to look for another job abroad.
Good paying jobs in the Philippines is as an unreachable dream. So the diaspora continue.
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