A problem for foreign workers

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor NANETTE L. GUADALQUIVER Busines Editor ERIC T. LORETIZO Sports Editor (On Leave) RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

These are disturbing days for Filipinos who have gone abroad to seek for the greener pastures that they have heard about from those who had left earlier. As Labor Department reports have recently noted, about one million of our citizens leave the country for other places yearly in the hope of finding better means of livelihood, and having a chance to give their loved ones a better future with what they provide.

As of this day, there is hardly any town or city in the country which does not have several residents who have packed up and left their homes and families for the same purposes. They leave, aware of the loneliness and strangeness they are likely to encounter, but also with the certainly that, unless they take the risk, there could never be an improvement in their lives, and those of the ones they care for. And back here, in their homes, are millions who are dependent on them, and who await what they send home every month for their food and shelter, education, health and other needs.

And it is not only the families left behind who rely on the martyrs, or Overseas Filipino Workers for survival. Our very own state, our economy, also relies on them, because it is the faithful remittance from all of them, every month, every year for several decades now, that has kept it afloat. That is a confirmed and admitted fact.

Now many of those brothers and sisters of ours who had gone abroad, even without the necessary documents to legitimize their stay in their chosen countries, are facing problems. In the United States, together with those of other nationalities they are marching down the streets calling on the government to allow them to stay and work there. In Indonesia, hundreds are being sent out, deported, because they are illegally in that country. The United Kingdom has just warned that it will no longer accept caregivers and domestic helpers after 2008. Even the Asian Development Bank has cautioned us not to rely on OFW money so much. With such news, and with so many thousands of new graduates joining the ranks of the unemployed, we need to have our government live up to its promise of creating more jobs here. Can it deliver?*