MANILA – A senior member of the Philippine Senate urged the government to provide special incentives or perks to companies that retrain and employ overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who have been laid off due to the global financial and economic turmoil.
Senate President Protempore Jinggoy Estrada explained the incentives could be in the form of tax credits, tax exemptions, income tax holidays, duty-free importation of raw materials and equipment or similar measures.
“With these incentives, local companies, including those that had decided to freeze the hiring of new employees due to the crisis, will be able to absorb additional personnel from the ranks of the retrenched OFWs,” Estrada pointed out.
Estrada, a son of deposed president Joseph Estrada, chairs the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment and Human Resources Development as well as the Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Labor and Employment.
He explained the granting of incentives could help the retrenched OFWs find new jobs and, at the same time, enable local businesses to weather the global crisis.
Citing the latest reports from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), Estrada disclosed that 3,567 OFWs working in seven countries, including the Chinese province of Macau, have been retrenched due to the economic turmoil.
The majority of the workers, totalling 321, were from Taiwan’ electronic, metal works and semi-conductor companies, the senator said.
The others, Estrada continued, worked in Macau’s casinos and construction firms, South Korea’s electronics industry, Brunei’s electrical and telecommunications firms, Australia’s shipbuilding industry, United Kingdom’s garments industry as well as foreign vessels around the world.
He cited the urgent need for the government to come up with innovative strategies in easing the adverse impact of the crisis on the OFWs and the country’s economy.
Estrada disclosed that even the Department of Labor and Employment has already admitted that the layoff trend among the OFWs is on the rise and might even escalate in the next months as the crisis worsens.
In a related development, reliable sources disclosed that the government might shelve an earlier plan to lift the ban on the deployment of OFWs, mostly domestic helpers, in Lebanon.
This came about when 87 OFWs, who were victimized by abusive employers and illegal recruiters, recently returned from the Lebanese capital of Beirut, said the sources who requested anonymity because they are not allowed to speak to media on the issue.
At present, the deployment ban is in effect in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Nigeria and Afghanistan.
Vice President Noli de Castro, also the presidential consultant on OFWs as well as head of the Task Force Against Illegal Recruitment, vowed to help the OFWs in distress by offering them free training at the state-owned Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda).
Tesda has been tapped by the government to spearhead the retraining of retrenched OFWs to enable them to learn new skills that would qualify them for jobs available in other foreign countries.
De Castro also sought the cooperation of the 87 victims so he could go after the illegal recruiters responsible for their plight.
He reminded Filipino workers who want to go abroad to first check whether the recruiting agencies are registered with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.
OFWs must also attend pre-departure orientation seminars to help prepare them not only in terms of their skills but also emotionally and psychologically for the challenges that they will meet abroad, De Castro stressed.
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