Slowdown in OFW remittances tells gov’t to change labor generation strategy

This is in reaction to a Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas report stating that overall OFW remittance in January this year was the lowest compared to the remittances during the same month in 2009 and 2010. Per BSP data, the money transfers grew significantly slower last January from 7.6 percent a year earlier and from 8.5 percent in the first month of 2010.

We were expecting that OFWs remittances will increase in 2011, in direct proportion to the steady increase in the number of Filipino workers going abroad. But on a yearly basis, OFW remittance hikes have been on the decline due to several factors, such as the political upheavals in some Arab countries in the Middle East and North Africa, the devastating earthquakes in Japan and New Zealand and economic crises in Europe and America.

So, it is not good to see that under the Aquino administration the labor thrust is still the same as those of the previous administrations’—the  peddling of unemployed and underemployed Filipino workers abroad where they are forced to do dirty, dangerous and dehumanizing jobs, their wellbeing, safety and labor rights altogether ignored and guaranteed no protection.

This only implies that the government remains a failure when it comes to creating local jobs with decent pay and benefits. For us, the government’s labor export program is not a reliable—in fact, it is  shrinking—job generation measure; it is a mere band-aid solution to our country’s economic woes.

We renew our call to the Aquino administration: Implement a genuine agrarian reform program adequately backed by allied services and technological support for farmers; and nationalize our important, strategic and basic industries like oil and mining. This twin approach will serve as our country’s economic backbone and ensure real national economic progress and development.

—JOHN LEONARD MONTERONA,

regional director, Migrante-Middle East [email protected]