This time of global financial crisis calls for the Executive Department to go the extra mile to help overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). They deserve our help because they are Filipino citizens, not merely because they remit more than $1 billion a month.

Here are some suggestions on how the OFWs could be helped:

1. The embassies and the labor attachés should be tireless in acting on OFWs complaints against foreign employers who use the crisis as an excuse to cut or freeze salaries, lengthen working hours, fail to provide good working conditions, or change the terms and conditions in work contracts.

2. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), through the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), should enable labor attaches to closely monitor OFWs on work sites. The ratio of attaches to workers (and budgets) could be raised in areas where there is a large concentration of OFWs.

3. The DOLE and Department of Foreign Affairs should work with a sense of urgency to activate—or sew up more—bilateral labor agreements. These agreements should specify that the human rights of OFWs will be honored and that their complaints will be acted on promptly by a bilateral, action-oriented committee.

4. In anticipation of layoffs due to the crisis, DOLE officials should more aggressively try to persuade other countries that their policies on repatriating, retrenching and retaining foreign workers be based on performance, not on nationality.

5. The reintegration packages of the DOLE should take into consideration the fact that returning OFWs, especially the low-skilled, will take a longer time to adjust because local jobs are harder to find. A source of anxiety among returning OFWs is survival at a time the number of unemployed would be swelling. Given the possibility that their savings could run out before they get hired again, the OFWs and their families would like to hear this early how the DOLE reintegration packages in this time of crisis differ from those in normal times.

6. The DOLE should speed up the release of benefit claims from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). It would help if DOLE/OWWA informed the OFWs the standard number of days it would take for such claims to be released.

ROMEO J. PAJARILLO (via email)