Termination, main cause for OFWs to return home, Manila says

Manila: Job termination is the main cause for overseas Filipino workers to return prematurely to their country, the Labour Department said, while disputing the view that plunging oil prices are forcing expatriates to come home.

“We thought initially that because of the hype about the decline in the global price of oil, OFWs [overseas Filipino workers] who would come home will advance this as reason for returning to the Philippines,” Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, labour secretary said in a statement, adding that “the record at the Assist WELL Centres show otherwise.”

Assist WELL is a programme set up by the government in 2014 to provide comprehensive assistance to OFWs who voluntarily sign up for repatriation or are forced by circumstances to go back to their native country prematurely.

The programme aims to ensure returning Filipino expat workers are successfully reintegrated into the mainstream society.

According to Baldoz, the majority of OFWs who returned prematurely cited contractual violations by their employers, such as underpayment of wages, misrepresentation, contract substitution, and excessive collection of fees.

There had been concerns that events taking place in various parts of the globe, particularly the Middle East, would result in the massive layoff of OFWs.

Baldoz said, based on recent data, the reasons cited by the OFWs for coming home to the Philippines were termination (21), end of contract (16), the oil price crisis (8) civil unrest (5), and health issues (4).

“I have instructed the POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration) to address these alleged violations by calling the attention of recruitment agencies that deployed these workers,” she said.

Earlier, government dismissed reports of massive retrenchments of Filipino expat workers in Saudi Arabia.

“There is no massive, oil-related OFW (overseas Filipino worker) retrenchment as of today,” last February 18.

Reports reaching Manila of massive job layoffs have been causing apprehension to families of Filipino migrant workers.

In the case of many Filipino families, it is the member who is working abroad who serve as the breadwinner in their family.

Baldoz also took exception to a statement by the Migrante Partylist that said at least two major companies hiring Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia had been retrenching its workers as an after effect of falling oil prices.

“One such statement — that of Migrante, with which we strongly disagree — was not based on hard facts. It exaggerates the situation and unnecessarily fuels the anxiety among the public. This kind of statement does not help at all,” according to Baldoz.

According to the reports, at least 50,000 had been laid off over the past several weeks. This was before Saudi Arabia and Russia announced that they are cutting back on oil production due to oversupply.

Prolonged oversupply will not only impact on the economies of the oil exporting nations but also those of other countries as well at it well cause prolonged depression on the price of this key commodity.