False promises from DOLE’s key officials

Filipino migrant workers and their organizations have been campaigning for the scrapping of the overseas employment certificate (OEC) for years now, as they consider this to be an arbitrary fee that is part of the bundle of Philippine state exactions on overseas Filipino workers. Not only does the OEC cost them hard-earned money, it also forces them to stand in long queues in consular offices that are often undermanned due to the government’s frequent cuts on the budgets for essential services to OFWs.

The strong and persistent campaigns by migrant organizations, most notably Migrante International and its overseas chapters, have drawn out promises from officials of the Department of Labor and Employment to reform or end the OEC system. In 2012, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said that the OEC “will now become coterminus with the validity of [the OFW’s] contract.” Better yet, Hans Leo Cacdac, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration head, hinted in social media in 2013, that the OEC will essentially be scrapped: “We are working on a system where an OFW in our database with updated Owwa [Overseas Workers Welfare Administration], etc. won’t need an OEC. Give us ’til 1st half of 2014.”

But the recent visit of DOLE officials to Hong Kong, led by no less than Baldoz and Cacdac themselves, dashed the expectations of millions of OFWs when they denied ever having made such promises. Instead, the two have strengthened the system by promoting its online version through the department’s “Balik Manggagawa” program. This is an in-your-face turnabout by DOLE officials who are now bent on implementing the Aquino administration’s ruthless policy of squeezing OFWs of their hard-earned money to generate public funds only to misallocate and misspend them later.

Migrante Sectoral Party (MSP) is extremely frustrated over DOLE’s lack of concern about and sincerity in enacting much-needed reforms for OFWs, like eliminating unjust state exactions as the OEC. The department is merely interested in milking the Filipino migrant workers dry, in line with the government’s labor export program and the World Bank’s profit-driven “migration for development” prescriptions.

In the eyes of OFWs everywhere, Baldoz and Cacdac are liars and con artists who pretend to stand by the rights and welfare of OFWs, but who actually stab them in the back with ineffectual concessions like the “online OEC” and futile dialogues with migrant organizations. They are untrustworthy, duplicitous government officials who cannot even stand by their public statements.

MSP-Hong Kong fully supports the demand of Filipino migrant workers for the scrapping of the OEC, which it considers to be an essential violation of the Migrant Workers Act of 1995. We also call for the resignation of Baldoz for masterminding the perpetuation of the antilabor and antimigrant OEC and unwarranted state fees imposed on OFWs. Filipino workers certainly deserve a better labor secretary who can deliver on their fundamental and just expectations.

Scrap the OEC! Baldoz, resign now! No to labor-export policy!

—VICKY CASIA-CABANTAC, chair, Migrante Sectoral Party-Hong Kong, [email protected]