Duterte okays law creating OFW social welfare attaché
Credit to Author: CATHERINE S. VALENTE, TMT| Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2019 11:34:11 +0000
PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte has signed into law a bill that would create offices for social welfare attachés for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), especially for victims of illegal recruitment.
Republic Act (RA) 11299, which amends RA 8042 or the “Migrant Workers Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995,” was signed by the President on April 17 but was only released to the media on Monday.
“The State shall afford full protection to labor, local and overseas, organized and unorganized, and promote full employment opportunities for all. Towards this end, the State shall provide adequate and timely social, economic and legal services to Filipino migrant workers, especially for workers who are vulnerable to physical, emotional, and psychological stress or abuse,” the law read.
Under the new law, the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) is mandated to deploy social welfare attachés “in countries with large concentration” of OFWs.
The law state that the social welfare attaché will “manage cases of OFWs and other overseas Filipinos in distress needing psychosocial services.”
The attaché will also “undertake surveys and prepare official social welfare situationers on the OFWs in the area of assignment,” according to the law.
RA 11299 also mandated the attaché to “establish a network with overseas-based social welfare agencies and/pr individuals and groups which may be mobilized to assist in the provision of appropriate social services.”
The attaché should also “respond to and monitor the resolution of problems and complaints or queries of OFWs and their families,” the law said.
The law also orders the attaché to “establish and maintain a databank and documentation of OFWs and their families so that appropriate social welfare services can be more effectively provided.”
The budget for the office will be appropriated under the DSWD while the implementing rules and regulations will be crafted by the same agency, in consultation with the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Department of Labor and Employment, the Department of Health, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration and other stakeholders.
Sen. Joel Villanueva, chairman of the Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development, had said that there were about 10 million Filipinos in more than 170 countries and about 2.3 million of them are migrant workers.
Despite this number, Villanueva lamented that there were only eight social welfare attachés deployed in several parts of the world as of May 2018.
Last week, the President said he was looking to place the recruitment of OFWs under the direct and exclusive control of the government as he called out private agencies over unfair practices and the abuse of migrants.
He also renewed his call for the creation of a Department of OFW, which would entail a law to be passed by Congress, by December.
The President promised to have a framework for the proposed department by the second week of August.
Duterte had vowed to create a full-fledged department that would streamline and simplify the bureaucratic requirements for Filipino workers aspiring to work or already working abroad.
Bills seeking to create an OFW department did not pass in the 17th Congress although some lawmakers vowed to push for it in the incoming 18th Congress, which opens on July 22.
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