A migrant labor group rated President Rodrigo Duterte’s first year in the administration as a year of “big talk” and “band aid solutions”.
Migrante International, a global alliance for Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), said Duterte has done “nothing substantial” to address the issue of forced migration.
“What we have seen thus far is a rehash of the same neoliberal policy of labor export when it comes to peddling Filipinos’ cheap and docile labor to the global market,” Migrante said in a statement titled “Suma 2017: A year of big talk, band-aids, and business-as-usual-for OFWs and Families,” Rappler quoted Migrante as saying.
Migrante cited the cases of OFWs in Saudi Arabia, wherein the government was only able to repatriate over 5,000 of the 11,000 affected OFWs.
Migrante urged the government to strengthen its promise of bringing back OFWs to the Philippines by creating opportunities locally.
“Unless President Duterte makes good of his promise to address the root of forced migration, it will be a never-ending and chronic cycle for OFWs and their families. If Duterte sincerely wants our OFWs to come back home, we need more regular jobs, higher wages, and pro-labor policies, not a labor export policy that has long gone bankrupt,” Migrante said.
Photo Credits: Wikimedia
