GMA: Greedy for remittance, criminally negligent

Press Statement
2 May 2009

GMA: Greedy for remittance, criminally negligent

This is in reaction to the speech of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo during the AFP change of Command ceremony at Camp Aguinaldo today who said "We salute our great Filipino worker for remitting more funds to our shores, for sustaining the hopes of our country and the dreams of their families,".

With such pronouncement, OFWs and their families could only deduced that She is no less than a greedy President who is criminally negligent to OFWs well being, rights and welfare, who is much willing to market millions of unemployed despite the bargain of its labor to the exploit and demise of foreign employers.

Our migrant workers often fall prey victims of human traficking, illigal recruitment, abuses, sexual harassment, maltreatment, labor malpractices, and racism and other forms of discrimination. Almost on a daily basis we could witness the deplorable plight of our fellow OFWs in different parts of the World. With the intensification of labor export by the Arroyo regime, thousands have been victims and more are to become victims of its vicious labor exportation policy.

The deplorable plight of OFWs abraod are worsening amid the absence of genuine protection mechanism for the protection of OFW rights and welfare and genuine social and welfare services. The OWWA fund held in trust to the government now reached to Php.11.7-B, but DoLE-POEA-OWWA failed to implement programs that would help alleviate the economic and socio-political conditions of most OFWs and their families.

Mrs. Arroyo failed to recognize the need to develope the local economy by getting away from the neo-liberal policies of globalization- privatization, liberalization, deregulation, and denationalization. Thus, its blind adherence to neo-liberal policies of globalization resulted to the destruction of our basic industries needed to rebound our struggling economy. The Arroyo regime failed to generate and create local jobs with decent pay; all it could do is to sell our human labor cheap abroad now relying solely to OFWs remittances and on the billions of fees and charges it imposes and collected to OFWs.

We will intensify our campaign, in whatever way we could, to expose and oppose Mrs. Arroyo's intensified labor export policy that further commodifies human labor.

Migrante vow to continuosly provide assitance to all OFW victims abroad as they were the very victims of this regime's crinimal neglect.

We maintain that the intensified exportation of human labor and its full deregulation is not the solution, but rather as an off shot of our society's basic problems, as thought by Mrs. Arroyo and her economic advisers.


For Reference:

John Leonard Monterona
Migrante-ME regional coordinator