A WORKERS advocacy group has urged the Labor department to allow the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration to recruit and deploy domestic workers to lessen illegal recruitment and protect Filipino workers from abuses.
Lilac Center president Nicon Fameronag said the move would lessen, if not completely eliminate and avoid domestic worker abuse, the scourge of overseas employment, particularly in the Middle East, and would also lessen the heavy burden of recruitment costs.
He said the government’s perennial problem of mounting and unresolved OFW welfare cases, mostly domestic workers as victims, would fade if it nationalized the recruitment and deployment of domestic workers.
“The POEA can very well handle the recruitment and deployment of domestic workers. It has the legal standing, the authority, the expertise, and the manpower complement to satisfy the world’s—particularly the Middle East’s—demand and preference for Filipino domestic workers,” Fameronag said.
He said the recommendation was sensible and logical since the POEA, through its Government Placement Branch, was already the country’s biggest recruiter of overseas Filipino workers.
“The GPB, actually and in effect, competes with the private licensed recruitment agencies in the business of recruitment because it solely recruits and deploys skilled workers for small and medium enterprises in Korea; caregivers and nurses for Japan and Germany; factory workers for Taiwan; and domestic workers for the households of royal families and government and diplomatic officials of other countries,” he said.
“In these instances, we have not heard of a single POEA OFW recruit complaining of abuse. Perhaps, this will happen with domestic workers if it is the government recruiting them,” he said.
The group also urged Congress to look into this “anomalous” situation of the “regulator” acting as the “regulated” recruitment agency.
The Lilac Center official said that with the POEA managing and handling the recruitment and deployment of domestic workers, welfare cases involving physical, emotional, and psychological abuses; work contract violations, such as overwork, non-payment, and underpayment of salaries and benefits; and other social injustices will be a thing of the past.
He said private recruitment were ill-equipped and lack the capacity to deal promptly on domestic worker abuse because of government complex rules and regulations and snail-paced bureaucracy.
“If the recruitment and deployment of domestic worker is nationalized, licensed recruitment agencies can focus on the recruitment of skilled and professional workers, such as welders, electricians, nurses, engineers, architects, IT personnel, accountants, human resource managers, business managers, and bank workers who are equally in high demand and who are preferred by global employers,” he added.