KAKAMMPI News

by ISAGANI DE LA PAZ www.ofwjournalism.net MANILA (OFW Journalism Consortium)—TWO Filipino-American analysts cited imbalanced services and weak state capacity as some of the factors fettering the Philippine government’s welfare fund in protecting the country’s economic heroes. “In the Philippines, where one in 12 people is a migrant and where everyone has a relationship to migration in one way or another, managing institutions like OWWA [Overseas Workers Welfare Administration] can be inherently difficult,” Dovelyn Rannveig Agunias and Neil G. Ruiz said in their paper “Protecting Overseas Workers: Lessons and Cautions from the Philippines”. Agunias of the Washington, DC-based Migration Policy Institute and Ruiz of The Brookings Institution would present their 32-paged paper this December 18. Based on their interviews with “several high-level government officials and migrants’ organizations, as well as on an analysis of several data sources on the welfare ...

Home > Pinoy Abroad > Top Stories Body found in Melbourne could be Filipino - report 12/19/2007 | 02:42 PM Email this | Email the Editor | Print | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us A woman believed to be a 50-year-old Filipino mother of five was found murdered and dumped in a Victorian front garden in Australia last Dec. 12. Online Australian newspaper The Australian reported Wednesday that the victim was badly beaten but the cause of death has yet to be established. It said investigators believe the victim is Luvina Dayang, 50, who has not been seen or heard from since Dec. 10. The Philippine consul and the Australian Federal Police have joined the investigation, even as Detective Senior Sergeant Jeff Maher said police were making progress. "Homicide detectives have spoken to a number of persons of interest. There is a strong lead in the investigation, but we would rather not make any further comment on that," he said. Police are also scanning footages taken by operators ...

The $25 membership fee being paid by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) for every contract processed at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) is directly remitted to the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA). POEA Administrator Rosalinda Baldoz made this clarification amid mounting calls to reduce the membership fees being collected from OFWs with the recent appreciation of the peso. "We are not the agency responsible in collecting the membership fee. It's OWWA and these fees collected directly go to the OWWA trust fund," Baldoz told GMANews.TV in a telephone interview. Baldoz said what POEA collects from the departing OFWs or from the contracts processed by the agency is the P100 processing fee which they directly remit to the national treasury. However, Baldoz said there are indeed plans to reduce the membership fee being collected to OFWs from the existing P1,275 (which uses using the P51 to $1 exchange rate) to P1,050 (with the new exchange r...

Philippine embassies and consulates abroad are also reportedly overcharging overseas Filipinos for passport renewal, authentication and other fees, apart from the higher conversion rate for the $25 membership dues to the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration. An OFW in Seoul, for instance, said he was charged 80,000 won for the $50 renewal of his passport last November. The equivalent of $50 in Korean won is even less than 50,000, said the OFW who requested anonymity. “Napakarami pong Pinoy na laging nagpapa-renew sa kanila.Dapat sabihin na lang nila 80,000 won ang bayad para walang problema. Bakit ganito po ang embassy natin, $50 ang bayad at meron naman akong $50. Ang problema raw po wala silang detector kaya ang nangyari pinabayad ako ng 80,000 won, samantalang ang $50 ay almost 50,000 won lang. Sana po sinabi na lang nila na 80,000 won at hindi $50," the OFW said. The same OFW paid P1, 275 when he left the country in October for the $25 membership fee to the OWWA, plus P100 ...

First, the good news: The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration have reduced the membership fee collected from overseas Filipino workers to reflect the peso appreciation against the US dollar. Now, the bad news: The reduction won't take effect until January 1, 2008. Emerging from an emergency meeting of the OWWA board on Thursday, POEA Administrator Rosalinda Baldoz announced that the $25 OWWA membership fee will be pegged at the peso-dollar exchange rate of P42:$1, instead of P51:$1, beginning Jan. 1, 2008 This translates to P1, 050, instead of the P1, 275 that OWWA used to collect from departing OFWs with contracts processed through the POEA. This fee is collected at the POEA together with the processing fee of P 200 and Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (Philhealth) coverage of P900, Baldoz said. Senate President Manuel Villar Jr. on Wednesday demanded an explanation from the POEA on what he considered as overcharging of th...

Middle East countries will need at least 10,000 hair dressers, cosmetologists and sewers in the next two years, a leader in the local recruitment sector said Wednesday. But because of the gender sensitivity issue in the Middle East, gay beauticians do not seem to stand a good chance of getting hired, according to Lito Soriano, former president of the Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc. “May mga qualified (Pinoy beauticians) kaya lang ibang gender. Sa Middle East countries may cultural barrier sila doon," he explained. Gays can still try their luck, but the chances of hiring women are higher. Countries in the Middle East, Soriano said, are aiming to be the world’s trading hub and this is evident in the construction of several infrastructures such as hotels, restaurants and spas. While the demand is there, Soriano said the local recruitment sector is in a dilemma over its capacity to meet the demand. Overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the hair and fashion industry in ...

Home > Pinoy Abroad > Top Stories 4 Filipino family members die in New Jersey fire CRISTINA DC PASTOR, Philippine News 12/19/2007 | 07:20 PM Email this | Email the Editor | Print | Digg this | Add to del.icio.us UNION, NJ — Four family members, including an elderly, perished in a savage fire, which torched their home less than two weeks before Christmas. The blaze erupted around 2:30 a.m. in Union Township in a middle-class home near the Garden State Parkway. The home at 962 Floyd Terrace was shared by Edgardo Aguas, 57, and his wife, Digna, 47, their daughter Emily, 14, and the child’s 86-year-old grandmother, who had arrived from Australia to celebrate the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary in October. She had meant to stay until Christmas. The family belongs to three generations of Aguases within the two-storey residence. The only survivor is EJ, the 21-year-old son, who jumped out of a window and is in the hospital. Town authorities said the fire was placed under control at 5 ...