Group sees surge in number of OFWs on visit visas

MANILA, Philippines - A surge of Filipino jobseekers to the United Arab Emirates using visit visas looms as laid-off overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) avoid huge expenses in formally seeking employment.

Migrante Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterola said the jobless OFWs will likely use visit visas to enter Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and other Middle East areas.

"This is a natural way out for laid-off workers, their survival instinct that would direct them to do so for their families to survive during this economic crisis," he said in an interview with online news site Khaleej Times. www.khaleejtimes.com

He said the huge amount needed for legal employment abroad is forcing OFWs to consider getting visit visas, amid poverty and global economic crisis.

Monterola voiced doubts the OFWs will avail of the Philippine government's Mobile Re-integration Task Force from Manila.

The task force has been job-matching and briefing retrenched workers on the possibility of opening their own business at home or shifting to other countries in need of Filipino workers.

"Even if there are thousands of job orders, as earlier declared by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), many Filipino job seekers will be hard pressed and will think twice as they know very well that deployment formalities require huge amount of money,"
he said.

He said aspiring OFWs need at least P50,000 (Dh5,000) or more depending on the position and category of work applied for them to be deployed legally abroad.

"He needs to pay for the processing fees, charges for police and National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) clearances, and the authentication of birth certificates, university diploma and Transcript of Records, which reach nearly P20,000 (Dh2,000)," he said.

Also, he said processing fees, which is in addition to the one month's salary authorised by the government as placement fee to the manpower recruitment agency, is burdensome for jobseekers.

"The higher the salary, the bigger is the amount required to pay for the recruitment fees. Worst, in most cases, the stipulated contractual salary is usually reduced upon arrival at the work site," he added.

On the other hand, he said the situation is a dilemma for the Arroyo government, which he said is stuck between deployment regulation and massive sell-out of OFWs abroad.

He said President Arroyo issued Administrative Order 247 on December 4, 2008 refocusing the functions of POEA from "regulation to full-blast markets development efforts, the exploration of frontier, fertile job markets for Filipino expatriate workers."

He cited the case of the offloaded 50 OFWs bound for UAE who have been barred from leaving Manila because they have been using visit visas.

Monterola urged government to re-study its "no work visa, no deployment policy" especially now that it is also imposing a ban on direct hiring in which Filipino workers and their families are strongly resisting. - GMANews.TV

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