By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer
7:10 am | Saturday, November 26th, 2011
MANILA, Philippines—Immigration agents at the country’s international
airports should not just offload Filipino workers holding overseas
employment certificates (OECs) on the mere suspicion that these are
fake, leaders of recruitment groups said on Friday.
The recruiters said this Friday at a forum hosted by the government’s
Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, which has been tasked by Vice
President Jejomar Binay to create a technical working group review the
Bureau of Immigration’s (BI) authority to offload overseas Filipino
workers (OFWs) suspected of being undocumented or victims of human
trafficking.
The OEC, issued by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration
(POEA), serves as proof that its holder is a documented OFW whose
employment abroad has been certified compliant with the agency’s
deployment regulations.
However, airport immigration officers have been unjustly overzealous
in offloading departing OFWs on mere suspicion that the OECs are fake,
according to the recruiters who included recruitment consultant Emmanuel
Geslani, Victor Fernandez of the Philippine Association of Service
Exporters, Alfredo Palmiery of the Federated Association of Manpower
Exporters, and Lita Hizon of the Coalition of Legitimate Agencies
Deploying Domestics.
They said the proposed offloading guidelines of the Bureau of
Immigration contained “redundant and incoherent layers” of requirements
which give immigration agents wide discretion to interrogate departing
OFWs.
These requirements are unnecessary since the departing OFW has
already passed through the Labor Assistance Center (LAC) which verifies
and approves the travel documents of the OFW whose OEC has already been
processed at the POEA, they said.
Workers’ rights
Geslani said immigration agents were not only violating OFWs right to
travel but also their right to seek gainful employment when they miss
their flights and could not report to duty on time because they were
offloaded.
“The OEC should be respected by the BI since the POEA is the sole
authority on workers leaving for jobs abroad, not the BI. The
immigration agents should not deny OFWs the opportunity to work abroad
based on mere suspicion. They should not require documented workers to
present other proofs of employment aside from the OEC,” Geslani said.
The recruiters pointed out that before an OEC is issued, the OFW has
to provide various documents such as their authenticated employment
contract, employment or work permit card, passport, two-way ticket or
itinerary issued by the travel agency, proof of membership with the
Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, and latest receipt of Pag-Ibig
Fund membership contributions.
“The frequent off-loading of some OFWs due to the indiscriminate
decisions of the agents—because they were suspicious of the OFW’s travel
documents or they had profiled OFW as an illegal—have resulted in the
loss of job opportunities for OFWs,” Geslani said.
The delays in the departure translates to “huge expenses” for the
recruitment agencies since they have to repurchase new tickets for the
workers, and some delays have caused some employers to cancel the job
orders, he said.
The recruiters recommended that the draft guidelines proposed by the
BI should be divided into two sections—one for tourists and the other
for fully documented workers carrying genuine and valid OECs.
The POEA reestablished the LAC at the Ninoy Aquino International
Airport early this year to serve as a clearing house where documents of
departing OFWs are checked and verified.
Geslani said an OFW who has been cleared by the LAC should not
anymore be questioned on his destination, documents, travel money, or
sponsors aside from checking the appropriate visa for the country of
destination.
http://bit.ly/uUoGR5
No comments:
Post a Comment