Robert B. Roque, Jr.
In trickles, we’re starting to get a glimpse of the incoming Cabinet. I’m not holding my breath, though. I remain largely unattached to the names coming up to the liking or picking of the president I did not vote for.
Keeping my perspectives down to issues instead of personalities, I find promise in the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW). And that is because the issues surrounding our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have been the advocacy championed by the lady the Marcos Jr. team is targeting to head the newborn department.
For so many years, Susan Ople has been running the Blas F. Ople Policy Center like clockwork, aiding the Filipino worker who experienced severe exploitation in a desert somewhere or was smuggled and abused by some ambassador in his/her official home abroad.
Apart from once gracing the opinion pages of Tempo, Ms. Toots Ople is known to me as a gold-hearted individual who has made the policy center part of the solution to the myriad of problems faced by our country’s No. 1 export – the Filipino overseas labor force.
Given the many problems of the sector, allow me to focus my bite on the standing ban on the deployment of Filipino workers to Saudi Arabia. A recent report quoting recruitment consultant and migration expert Manny Geslani stated that 20,000 Pinoys assured of jobs in the Arab state remain “stranded” in the Philippines because of this ban.
For those unfamiliar with the root of this problem, you’d probably think the obvious solution would be for presumptive DMV Secretary Ople – with the full backing of BBM – to lift the deployment ban so that the estimated 10,000 household service workers (HSWs) and 10,000 more skilled laborers and professionals could fly to their jobs in Saudi.
That’s one way of looking at it, even if Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III’s deployment ban is a principled stand that looks after the welfare of 11,000 Filipino workers in Saudi who were arbitrarily laid off, repatriated, and unpaid. It is also a stand against non-improving working conditions, particularly for the safety and well-being of our exported domestic workers.
The fact is, while the Saudi government has taken steps to put further safeguards for HSWs on paper, the unspeakable rights abuses are more commonplace than ever told. And the royal oligarchy – which is to blame for the obliterated existence of private construction firms that owe our repatriated OFWs wages and benefits since 2015 – stands ever mightily now under the leadership of King Mohammed bin Salman.
Not to lose fortitude, perhaps we can support a new administration if it so lifts the ban to allow these 20,000 “stranded OFWs” to take their rightful places in the Saudi job stream. It is a given statistics that out of the 88,000 OFWs we deploy yearly, at least 30,000 of them used to be bound for Saudi Arabia.
As for principles and grievances, our government can still demand the Saudi government payment through diplomatic channels; and maybe even retain the ban on deploying HCWs to prevent further abuses. But for unemployment numbers to move downwards and put more money in the hands of families, then it may be time to open the floodgates for the Saudi job market.
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SHORT BURSTS. For comments or reactions, email firingline@ymail.com or tweet @Side_View. Read current and past issues of this column at https://www.thephilbiznews.com
