"There must be a better way to treat our OFWs."
As I write this piece, more than 4,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are stranded in various quarantine facilities, collateral damage to another example of a failed bureaucracy: the continuing failure of the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) to pay its P1-billion debt to the Philippine Red Cross (PRC) for the latter’s COVID-19 testing services.
The past months have been harrowing for these OFWs. They suddenly found themselves jobless as the pandemic ground the economies of their host countries to a halt. With no source of income, some of them subsisted on the generosity of fellow Filipinos and whatever aid they got from the labor office. They endured the tedious process of repatriation from their host countries. From being stranded abroad, they now find themselves stranded in quarantine facilities here, anxious to rejoin their families but at the mercy of bureaucrats.
It is a sad reality, one that has transcended administrations: Government has yet to figure out how to reciprocate, in both policy and service-delivery, the sacrifices and contributions to the economy of OFWs. There must be a better way to treat our modern-day heroes.
But seemingly forgotten in the mad tumble over how to process and facilitate the return of OFWs was the shocking revelation made a few months back that the trust fund for overseas workers could be severely depleted by 2021 if the current level of spending continues. By yearend, the P18.8-billion Overseas Workers Welfare Fund may go down to only P10 billion.
The OWWA Fund is a trust fund being administered by a government agency, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). The fund is not government sourced. It is sourced from the contributions of an estimated 10 million OFWs. It was envisioned as a stand alone, self-sustaining financial institution, like the Social Security System (SSS) and Government Service Insurance system (GSIS).
So when OWWA says it has spent that much for OFWs, it should be rightfully interpreted as the OFWs – not the government – spending for their own fares, hotels, and food.
The role of OWWA officials and personnel is to make sure the fund is protected, invested, administered well, and disbursed with transparency and efficiency. Overseas workers are not clients, but technically their employers.
Repatriation and emergency expenses are not the main reasons for the trust fund’s existence. Yet it has been forced to spend for the return of their member-contributors. The OWWA Fund was created to provide an array of programs. They cover financial and other forms of assistance, reintegration programs mostly in the form of skills training and livelihood assistance for those who have decided to stay home for good and set up their own businesses.
Call me an alarmist but I am concerned over the future of the trust fund. Saving the fund would be a major challenge, especially when the OFWs themselves are unable to pay their regular contributions. The Labor Department says over one million OFWs may be jobless by 2021. If such a scenario plays out, then you are looking at a dire future for the OWWA fund. This is why, as far as I can recall, the agency is asking Congress for fund infusion, the first time since it was created in the early 1980s.
The pandemic has exposed the instability that has been the state of the fund. It has strained the fund to its limits, and could precipitate its collapse. Why it has come to this can be answered by a scrutiny of how the fund has been managed or mismanaged over the years. But right now, the imperative is to save the fund of our modern day heroes.
The author is a former journalist and a political and government communications practitioner.
