The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
By Riza Lozada
While most Filipinos, particularly car owners, public-transport operators and drivers and commuters, have benefitted greatly from the decline in the world prices of oil, the development has become a nightmare for the country’s estimated 2.2 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Middle East, the world’s main oil source, who are now in danger of losing their lucrative jobs as their employers, severely affected by the oil-price decline, have started drastically reducing construction and other mega projects.
Labor rights advocate Susan “Toots” Ople, head of the Blas F. Ople Policy Center and Training Institute, told the Samahang Plaridel’s Manila Hotel Kapihan last Monday of the increasing number of families of displaced OFWs seeking assistance from the center and the government.
They want to know what programs of the government there are to assist them.
The foundation, named after her father, the late former labor secretary and senator, has been championing the cause of OFWs.
She cited the case of the once-mighty Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Aramco) that used to own a substantial stake in the local oil-refining firm Petron, which is now the subject of complaints by more than 50 OFWs for non-payment of their salaries as a consequence of the current oil-price freefall in the world market.
She said that, while almost 90 percent of OFWs are covered by insurance policies under a program of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa), insurance companies, with their stringent policies, cannot be relied on to provide immediate relief to the increasing number of OFWs returning home.
“Per our experience in the Libyan crisis, insurance companies did not want to provide insurance benefits because the circumstances that resulted
in the problems in Libya were due to social unrest,” she said.
Ople said the current crisis in the Middle East might also fall outside of insurance coverage, since it is the result of falling oil prices that could be considered an economic upheaval, not an accident.
OFWs sent home a total of $22.8 billion in the first 11 months of last year, or more than $2 billion a month, equivalent to 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP).
Earlier, former Budget Secretary Benjamin Diokno, commenting on the oil-price decline, said its negative impact on OFW remittances and revenue from fuel taxes would outweigh the positive effects.
Remittance growth slowed to 3.6 percent in dollar terms until November last year from a 5.8-percent growth in 2014, Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) data showed.
Crude-oil prices dropped 29 percent in the past six months forcing Saudi Arabia to cut generous subsidies to its citizens.
The United Arab Emirates’s Etihad Rail also suspended a major rail project after firing almost a third of its workforce, including many OFWs.
BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr., commenting on the oil-induced Mideast turmoil, noted that the trouble was now more widespread; whereas in previous cases when the problem was concentrated in just one Mideast country, the OFWs would simply just simply move to a neighboring nation and find employment.
The BSP had lowered its remittance-growth target to 4 percent, both for 2015 and 2016, from 5 percent.
The World Bank, which in October forecast a 5.5-percent remittance growth, said it is also reviewing its projections.
“The fall of the price of oil to below $30 per barrel is unprecedented. No one expected this to happen,” World Bank Senior Economist Karl Kendrick Chua said.
Ople said the Ople Center and Training Institute has been representing OFWs in dialogues with the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).
She said the redeployment of those displaced and the development of new labor markets are being explored.
Ople urged the government to present a reintegration program for displaced OFWs within the next six months.
Partylist ACTS OFW Rep. John Bertiz noted during the Kapihan that the deployment of OFWs increased 300 percent from 2009, with the most number represented by household workers.
It was noted that the deployment of OFWs ballooned because of the continued failure of the government to create local jobs.
Ople and Bertiz, along with other non-governmental organizations (NGOs), also called for the creation of a Department of Migration that would focus on the development of programs for the reintegration of OFWs returning to the country.
Ople said she would also seek the consolidation of all payments from OFWs because in many instances when an OFW died or suffered injuries from work, the families seeking benefits were being practically given the runaround—shuff l ing from one government agency to another—with most of them ending up not getting any benefit at all.
Among the numerous fees collected from OFWs are OWWA fees and the mandatory insurance payments.
She also questioned the government’s sincerity in reintegrating OFWs who returned to the country.
The move in the Senate led by Sen. Pia Cayetano to remove age limit in the hiring of workers would be helpful for returning OFWs, she said, indicating her group’s support for it. This would allow the OFWs to stay in the country.
The group of Ople and ACTS OFW also noted that the national budget for the reintegration of OFWs was very small.