MANILA (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 18, 2011) – Overseas Filipinos in at least 20 countries participated Sunday in the so-called “Zero Remittance Day” to dramatize their protest over various problems facing they faced abroad.
Migrante International said the protest marked overseas Filipinos’ disgust, dissent, anger and frustrations over the magnitude of problems that the Filipino migrant labor sector continues to face, and escalating, under the Aquino regime.
Overseas Filipinos from Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Macau, New Zealand, Taiwan, KSA, Qatar, Libya, UAE, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK, Canada and the United States held their remittances back home for one day.
“While President Aquino acted with surprising and remarkable dispatch to have Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo arrested and Chief Justice Renato Corona impeached,” said Migrante International chairperson Garry Martinez, ”the same cannot be said of his regime as hundreds and thousands of remittance-sending Filipinos languish in jail, are stranded, abused, duped, raped, violated and scurrying for their own lives and safety during crises, wars, conflicts and disasters.”
It has been over a year and a half since Aquino assumed office but nothing has come off its promise to ease the burdens of OFWs, much less create jobs at home or raise wages. According to Martinez, OFWs may laud him for putting Arroyo behind bars or impeaching Corona but the fact remains that Aquino’s labor export program has all the imprint of an Arroyo presidency – cheap labor, abused persons, slaughtered dignity.
Nothing short of the reversal of Aquino’s present economic policies – including the labor export policy – can make OFWs believe that what is unfolding before their eyes, Aquino vs. Arroyo, is not just plain power play of one faction lording it over the other, or of vindictiveness clashing with thievery.
Meanwhile, OFWs’ problems remain neglected and their situation has become worse.
For this, Martinez sounded off the following call to the Aquino regime. “By the power of not sending our own remittances, or delaying it for a day, we call on President Aquino to act with the same haste and zealousness that he did with Arroyo and Corona, to grant us the following demands – no to budget cuts. Instead, higher state subsidy for direct OFW services under the DFA, DOLE and other concerned agencies; full audit and investigation of OWWA funds, especially those plundered by Arroyo, and the scrapping of the OWWA Omnibus Policies; retract moves to impose mandatory Pag-Ibig, SSS and insurance fees and taxes for OFWs; legal assistance to OFWs on death row and in jail, and massive repatriation of stranded OFWs for Christmas; and for a a genuine and sustainable reintegration program for returned OFWs, not on the basis of loans such as the OWWA P2B Reintegration Package, but as a result of land reform and national industrialization.
It was not the first time that Migrante International led calls for a Zero Remittance Day. Despite criticisms of “economic sabotage,” Migrante argues that for quite too long government and big business have maximized the use of OFW remittances for their own selfish interests.
“It is about time that OFWs make their remittances speak for themselves,” said Martinez.”The power to send, or not to send their remittances, rests on OFWs alone.”
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