The overseas Filipino workers’ group Migrante-Middle East is opposed to a legislator’s proposal to collect an additional $50 fee from every departing OFW to help sustain the government’s emergency repatriation fund under the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).
Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona said that Manila Rep. Ma. Theresa Bonoan-David’s proposal “is ill advised.”
“She may be misinformed because the issue is not about lack of funds,” Monterona said in a statement issued on Saturday.
According to him, the OFW trust fund under OWWA is now about P13 billion and is earning. However, the OWWA allegedly does not have enough programs and welfare services to OFWs and their dependents.
“The OWWA has not been transparent on the real status of the OFWs trust fund and where it is being spent,” Monterona said.
He claimed that Bonoan-David’s proposal “is clearly anti-OFW” because it would just be an added burden to Filipino migrant workers. Monterona also said that it is against the mandate of Republic Act 10022 or the Migrant Workers Act of 2010.
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