Gov't officials should try living under a bridge -- Loren

How come hundreds if not thousands of abused overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are stranded worldwide under subhuman living conditions if the government is really doing its best to repatriate them?

Senator Loren Legarda raised this question yesterday as she decried as a "lame excuse" the reason given by Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) chief Carmelita Dizom on why 80 to 90 runaway OFWs had been living under a bridge in Saudi Arabia for some time now.

Loren lamented that the administration may have gotten callous by the number of Filipinos also living in dehumanizing conditions under bridges in the Philippines that it can choose to have a cavalier attitude towards a few dozen OFWs also facing the same condition abroad.

"To empathize with poor Filipinos living under bridges and with the OFWs facing the same plight in Saudi, our government officials should try living under a bridge before dismissing what they are facing," said Loren.

"OWWA says that the OFWs fled abusive employers and were, thus, without release and papers and could only wait for Saudi authorities to deport them," said Loren, noting a press statement by Dimzon.

"To me, that's buck-passing because OWWA is supposed to coordinate with other government agencies like the POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration) and the DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs) to secure the necessary exit papers for the distressed OFWs," she said.

Loren stressed that the excuse may just be a cover to fend off criticisms why OWWA cannot immediately repatriate the runaway OFWs if there is truth to its claim that it has billions of pesos deposited at Land Bank and Development Bank of the Philippines.

"There may be a conscious effort to say that the problem is not about money but the required exit papers, which, I have no doubt, will be provided by the Saudi authorities if only Philippine officials will work overtime to get them for the OFWs," the senator said.

She stressed that since the OFWs were the victims, there should be no reason why they would be denied exit clearances.

Likewise, she expressed dismay that OWWA had chosen to brush aside the problem of the OFWs living under a bridge by saying that only about 80 to 90 OFWs live there and not hundreds. Dimzon had said that other nationals who had put up tents under the bridge may have been mistaken for as OFWs.

"Whether we are talking about one OFW or one million OFWs, the fact is that no Filipino, after being abused by his employer, should be left fending for himself or given mere lip-service by the government," Loren said.

Earlier, Loren had called for a Senate investigation on the whereabouts of the P11.4 billion OWWA funds, as well as how it had performed its task of providing welfare assistance to OFWs, who each pay OWWA $25 in membership fee per contract, whether new or renewal.

"Reports had pegged the number of OFWs to about eight million at present. Multiply that to the $25 membership fee and you get $200 million, which is P9.6 billion based on an exchange rate of P48 to a US dollar. And we are not even talking about past fees that had been collected by OWWA," she pointed out.