The POEA and our OFWs

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

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

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration recently barred a recruitment agency from sending workers abroad for violation of recruitment regulations. This is a move that it should take oftener as it becomes stricter with the compliance of such agencies with regulations imposed on them because of so many complaints from overseas Filipino workers who found that they had been duped by their so-called recruitment agencies.

In the most recent case reported, the POEA stopped the agency because it was found to have charged excessive fees for the placement of workers abroad. The report said POEA had cancelled the license of the agency that was found guilty of charging and collecting P21,100 from a worker seeking work in a Middle East country.

We have heard about so many cases of desperate jobseekers who, in their eagerness to find work abroad, have gone into debt in order to meet the charges asked by recruitment agencies. Often, too, we hear of such workers finding out that the agencies supposed to secure work for them in foreign countries are not legitimate ones and will only continue to give excuses or ask for unnecessary requirements to delay their expected departure, only to find out later that they have been swindled.

And even for those who actually get hired abroad, many have also discovered that they have been shortchanged by their alleged recruitment agencies who get advances for their salaries, and cut off all contacts with them later, leaving them to fend for themselves. Worse, the women jobseekers could even find themselves, not in jobs they expected, but being forced into disreputable ones such as those of entertainers or, worse, as sex workers.

As the government agency supposed to look out for the well-being and protection of our people who want to work in other countries, therefore, the POEA must be stricter in monitoring the procedures and requirements of recruitment agencies, and impose on them the proper sanctions once found violating the laws covering them.*