OFW funds –
plus and minus

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor CHERYL CRUZ Desk Editor PATRICK PANGILINAN Busines Editor NIDA A. BUENAFE Sports Editor RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

The report that remittances from the country’s overseas Filipino workers have increased from last year’s figures covering the same period, somehow elates as well as saddens us.

The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas has announced that such remittances showed a total of $1.7 billion in March, this year, compared to $1.62 billion of the same month last year. This, the BSP further said, brings to $4.84 billion remitted in the first quarter of the year. In its announcement, the BSP also noted that the increase could be attributed to the sustained demand for Filipino manpower in various countries.

We say the report elates us because it means more funds for our economy that will translate to development and improvements in our country. For so many years now, it has been the foreign earnings of our workers that have propped up our economy, and this has been acknowledged by our leaders. It is therefore no exaggeration when those overseas workers are referred to as “unsung heroes.” Time and again, they have lifted our country up from the doldrums that our own resources cannot fully solve.

What is saddening, however, is that these amounts of remittances are also backed by thousands of dismantled families, neglected, or even spoiled children who grow up without the proper supervision of their parents. Such deprivations, and the resulting disturbances in the lives of our young people are what psychologists refer to as “social costs”.

When can we be developed enough to be able to employ our own people here in our own country? To think that a great percentage of those OFWs work at menial jobs where often they are maltreated and cheated of proper compensation. Such workers have to make do with that kind of work because they do not have the skills or the training for other employment.

That is why the moves of our Education officials to improve and strengthen the education background of our people should be supported. Not only will our workers then qualify for work that is dignified, they can also not be intimidated or bullied, and still bear up. Aside from that, they will also be earning more, saving more and shortening the time they spend away from their families.*