MANILA – A Filipino migrants’ rights organization has slammed the Aquino government for discouraging overseas Filipino workers from joining a protest that would stop the sending of money to the Philippines for one day.
The government said the protest will only hurt the families of Filipinos working abroad.
But despite this, OFWs and various groups have stopped sending their remittance on Thursday as a protest against government corruption and the scandal involving the Priority Development Assistance Fund given to lawmakers.
“The Aquino regime was hell bent on discouraging OFWs not to join our Zero Remittance Day campaign which is a symbolic campaign to demand for the abolition of all forms of pork barrel including that of President Aquino. And in fact, our kin and relatives have urged us not to remit today in solidarity to the anti-pork campaign in the home front,” John Leonard Monterona, coordinator of Migrante Middle East-North Africa, said in a statement sent to the Mindanao Examiner.
Monterona said Aquino and his allies in Congress did not know how to read OFWs’ clear message that is “OFWs and our families, just like other sectors, are demanding the abolition of all forms of pork barrel including yours in the Executive department. We want more govt. funds poured into social services, health, education, and on-site services and programs for OFWs and our families.”
“We won’t be surprised that tomorrow, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas will issue a manufactured data of remittance sent today to prove that OFWs remittance is within the daily average in-flow. Then the Palace spin doctors will echo that the Zero Remittance Day has no impact to the economy,” he said.
Monterona said their group and several OFWs groups in the Middle East and North Africa are planning to continue the ‘Zero Remittance Day’ campaign every month.
“The symbolic ‘Zero Remittance Day’ campaign is OFWs contribution to our people’s fight versus corruption in the government amid Aquino’s so-called Tuwid na Daan slogan,” he said.
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