Stopping Filipinos from leaving

It’s déjà vu all over again.

That’s how I felt reading the report on the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration trying to dissuade jobless Filipino women from going to work in Middle Eastern countries (“Scare tactics won’t work on jobless women, says OWWA,” 1/21/18).

Wasn’t it only some decades ago during the Iraq war when our government offered to repatriate Filipino housekeepers, with a majority of them preferring to stay in those Muslim countries?

Is it lack of education or of information about abusive foreign employers that drives so many Filipinos to slavery overseas?  Doesn’t it denote a lack of faith and hope in this nation’s leaders for countless women to leave their families to work in danger zones abroad?

Obviously most of those citizens jettison any nationalist feelings to flee this impoverished country.

Another story in the Inquirer about Filipino women who worked in Japan as entertainers and chose to stay in that country showed the obvious fact that they don’t want to face poverty awaiting them at home.

It also proves that through the years, under different administrations and the usual gaggle of corrupt officials with their phony promises, this country remains at the bottom of the pile compared with its prosperous neighbors.

Didn’t President Duterte promise to create jobs to keep Filipinos at home? And hasn’t he recently engaged in his usual bluster by saying no more Filipinos will be shipped to Kuwait?

Let’s see how long it will take before that order ends up being ignored and more bodies shipped out so as not to reduce the amount of overseas remittances.

Has a study been made to see how our economy would fare if remittances were to end?

TESS E. MANZANO, [email protected]