OFW Bank gains support among recruiters

OFW Bank gains support among recruiters

A big group of recruitment agencies has expressed its support to the proposed a bank exclusively for overseas Filipino workers.

Jackson Gan, vice president of the Federate Association of Manpower Exporters (FAME), said it is right time to create an "OFW Bank" to protect the remittances of OFWs as the US dollar getting weaker against the Philippine peso.

"It is high time for the OFWs to have their own bank that would serve their financial and investment needs...OFWs have suffered so much in the drop of their dollars' value to the peso," Gan said.

FAME has 700 member licensed recruitment agencies.

Sen. Jose "Jinggoy" Estrada, chairman of the Committee on Labor and Joint Congressional Oversight Committee on Labor, said an OFW bank would substantially cut the expenditures of the OFWs.

"The Philippine Overseas Workers Bank will grant loans and other financial assistance preferably to OFWs, their spouses or heirs for development of agriculture and small and medium-scale commercial and industrial enterprises, and, to workers applying or re-applying for overseas employment to defray the payment of placement fees and other expenses," Estrada said.

In an earlier interview with Arab News, Jimmy Leonida, one of the founders OFW Net Foundation and OFW International Holdings, said the idea to create an OFW Bank was first hatched after OFWs, who got acquainted with each other through the Internet, formed the OFW Net Foundation.

In December 2001, the group first met in Manila and then decided to establish the OFW International Holdings as a corporation to handle the business interests of the Foundation.

The core group consists of Filipinos from the United States, Singapore, Australia, the Netherlands, and other countries.

There are around seven million documented and undocumented OFWs to date.ABSCBN News

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