Press Statement
16 January 2008

For reference:    Ramon Bultron
                        Managing Director
                        Tel. No.: 94773141

Philippine-led GFMD will lead to lipservice protection and intensified forced migration

The irony of the Philippines hosting the second Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) and the Department of Foreign Affairs' projection that it will use the occasion to improve the condition of Filipino workers abroad is that it is a recognition of the Philippines' developed labor export program and a confession of the governments' inutility in protecting its nationals abroad.
 
The GFMD is a process that perpetuates forced migration of cheap but highly-skilled laborers. While it avows to discourage migration for development as a framework, its talking points are veered precisely towards such goal couched as improving management of migration process. Under the leadership of the Philippine government, the October meeting is in danger of paying more lipservice to the plight of migrant workers while concretizing plans and agreements towards increasing profits from the commodification of migrant labor.

The Philippines is really a model in commodification of migrant workers. Its Labor Export Policy (LEP) has been institutionalized to systematically export a million workers a year to generate billions of dollars in remittances to prop up an economy bankrupted by adherence to globalization policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization.

According to the World Bank, remittance in the Philippines in 2006 staggeringly accounts for 13% of the country's GDP and is equal to 1,198% of foreign direct investments, 304% of commercial service exports, 37% of manufacturing exports, 497% of agricultural exports and 2415% of Official Development Assistance.

With such results, the Philippine government will do everything to perpetuate the forced migration of its nationals and even make them more profitable to ensure the steady flow of remittance and profit from government charges to save the sagging economy.

A recent policy of the government to do so was the training for domestic workers stipulated in the POEA Guidelines. This new rule, instead of improving the situation of Filipino domestic workers, aggravated their condition as it further increased the money migrants had to shell out in order to work abroad and put them in an even more vulnerable situation of abuse from recruitment agencies and employers.

While it institutes policies like the said guidelines, it cannot even implement its standard employment contracts for Filipino migrants in the Middle East or the POEA's Balik-Manggagawa program for OFWs in Taiwan.

The systematic labor export has also resulted to a sophisticated system of collection of government fees that further bloats the governments' coffers at the expense of migrant workers. Recently, it was exposed that agencies such as the OWWA and the POEA have been overcharging OFWs by taking advantage of the sliding US dollar to collect more.

With its record, the Philippine government leading an effort to uphold the rights of migrant workers is so fantastic to the point of deceit.

Migrants' groups and institutions must remain vigilant of the GFMD process. Governments should be taken to task in resolving the major concerns of migrant workers on wage, job security, services, social inclusion and equality. For the Philippine government, in particular, it must be pressed to address policies such as the POEA guidelines, OWWA Omnibus policies, neglect of distressed OFWs, and giving of relief to migrants in the face of mounting crisis.

To leave the GFMD in the hands of the Philippine government and its like-minded counterparts will surely put migrant workers in a worse situation and will only intensify forced migration and commodification of migrants.

This, we must not allow.