‘Zero remittance’ day protest legitimate - Migrante

MANILA, Philippines — Migrante-Middle East, an alliance of OFW organizations in the Middle East, has defended its "no remittance" campaign as a legitimate and fair protest action on the alleged gross negligence of OFWs and their families committed by the Arroyo administration.

"We have a government that is irresponsible and have long been committing economic plunder to our nation at the expense of the millions of OFWs huge remittances, OFWs who were forced to work abroad due to the failure of Arroyo administration to create jobs locally with decent wages and rightful benefits," said John Leonard Monterona, regional coordinator of Migrante-ME.

Migrante-ME said in no way could OFWs be accused of being economic saboteurs by acting collectively not to remit even in just a single day, and that is on October 29, a Wednesday.

"The Arroyo administration and its minions are the real economic saboteur as we have seen unto the numerous cases of corruptions in the past including this ZTE broadband anomalous deal," Monterona added.

"Arroyo's and political lackeys are all but bureaucrat-capitalists. They are the very cause of our nations' poverty by allowing their greed to overpriced government projects so that they could have share on their big pockets. Then, right after, this government will impose additional taxes again and again putting burden the costs of an overpriced projects into our own shoulder especially us overseas worker," Monterona added.

Migrante has listed down some of Arroyo's "sins" as follows which it said justified its campaign for "Zero remittance" on October 29.

• Plunging the country into worse poverty while corruption intensifies, bribery gets more widespread and criminal neglect of distressed OFWs as shown on the cases of beheaded OFWs and scores of others who are on death row in the Middle East;

• Keeping OFWs milking cows through various government fees charged in the Philippines and even more charges paid in Philippine posts abroad;

• Implementation of the POEA Guidelines for Filipino domestic workers abroad that paved the way for worse overcharging of recruitment agencies;

• Implementation of the OWWA Omnibus Policies that took away many of the already limited assistance of the said agency to OFWs and family while giving a freer rein for Mrs. Arroyo and his minions to plunder the fund;

• Inaction on issues that will at least alleviate the situation of Filipinos abroad including the call for wage increase, improvement of labor situation and protection of the rights of undocumented migrants;

"These were enough reasons for OFWs and their families to completely withdraw their trust and confidence in the Arroyo government task by its imperialist masters to host the most anti-migrants gathering, the 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development," Monterona said. - D'Jay Lazaro, GMANews.TV

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