LABOR Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III on Wednesday said the government will revisit all existing bilateral agreements with other countries following the country’s signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoUs) with Kuwait in behalf of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) based there.
“Actually, we are going to revisit all existing bilateral agreements,” he said at Wednesday’s Senate hearing inquiring into recent deaths of OFWs and the government’s migration policies.
Mr. Bello was responding to Senator Nancy S. Binay-Angeles’s question on whether the Philippines has existing MoUs with other countries aside from Kuwait due to the labor policy constraints being faced by OFWs in other countries.
He said the review was timely since some agreements were already outdated.
However, special envoy to Kuwait and presidential adviser on OFW concerns Abdullah D. Mama-o said there was no need to formulate an MoU with Oman and Bahrain since the two countries have abolished the kafala system or the system in Middle Eastern countries wherein foreign workers must be sponsored by a local employer to get a work permit.
The system has been deemed a source of complaint among several OFWs whose employers confiscate their passport to prevent them from reporting abuses.
Also at the hearing, Filipino Migrant Workers Group Jun S. Aguilar pointed out that government agencies failed to consolidate their databases on OFWs, as mandated by Republic Act No. 8042 or the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995, to better monitor the situation of Filipino workers abroad.
“This has been (an) issue 23 years ago and we always go back to this issue on the monitoring and the data on OFWs. The shared government information system on migration which was embodied in the law has not been achieved so far,” Mr. Aguilar said.
In response, Mr. Bello said this was a wake-up call for the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Labor and Employment, among other government agencies, to comply with the law and ensure the safety of OFWs.
“It look likes this provision has been missed out….This inter-agency committee should be convened,” he said.
For his part, Senator Joel J. Villanueva is looking into mandating household service workers to secure a certification by the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) before being deployed abroad. He said this requirement would arm Filipino workers with the necessary job skills and prevent cases of abuse. — Camille A. Aguinaldo

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