Sunday, April 15, 2007 Asean migration pact seen to push low-skilled workers into further risk By Jeremaiah M. Opiniano
LESS protected under an international convention, domestic helpers and low-skilled temporary migrant workers still couldn't find solace within a pact among Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) members, analysts pointed out recently.
Advocates say this omission by member-countries in a non-binding declaration on migrant workers' protection by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations could push millions of transient workers into accepting more dirty and demeaning jobs and weak bargaining positions.
What has prevailed in bilateral or multilateral arrangements on migrant workers is the movement of business and skilled people not on semi-skilled and unskilled workers, says Chia Siow Yue of the Singapore-headquartered East Asian Development Network (EADN).
Chia was recently in the country to speak on the "Asean Declaration on the Protection and Promotion on the Rights of Migrant Workers" that was forged in the country two months ago.
Her insights come as a second-thought on a pact that received high praises even from militant migrant advocates' groups like the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA).
"It (Asean declaration) is good news for migrant workers," MFA's William Gois said in a separate forum.
Gois said the Philippines capitalized on its hosting of the Asean summit to move this non-binding declaration forward.
This is a big first step for "Asean governments to recognize the contributions of migrant workers," he added.
Gois echoes analysts' views that temporary migrant workers remain the source of many of the Asean member-countries' economic strength in the past five years.
The Philippines, for one, has weathered one financial crisis after another because of billions of overseas Filipinos' dollar remittances.
International Monetary Fund (IMF) data on the balance of payments has cited the Philippines as Asean's leading recipient of remittances from 380,080 temporary contract workers.
Data from 1998 to 2005 by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) bared that the Philippines has deployed some 196,900 temporary contract workers to Singapore, 54,914 to Malaysia, 96,748 to Brunei, 14,051 to Indonesia, 12,921 to Thailand, and 5,446 to Vietnam.
Still, Gois personally thinks the declaration "is only for a select group of workers, and eases out low-skilled migrant workers".
"Unskilled labor is being hired as cheap labor in Asean's competitive industries. Negotiators in trade talks seem blind to the plight of unskilled workers," he added.
Challenges
Chia cited that the Asean pact only brought more challenges to protect these workers -mostly in dirty, demeaning, and dangerous jobs.
Studies have noted that domestic helpers are vulnerable to sexual and physical violence while several cases of riots occurred in construction projects involving Asian foreign workers.
Gois says he is worried that the rights of low-skilled workers in Asean "will not be protected".
He cited as example MFA's documentation of Malaysia's continued crackdown of undocumented migrants.
Inputs by Vijayakumari Kanapathy of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in Malaysia reveal there would be an increase in the number of migrant workers in his country.
Kanapathy said while his country classifies "contract migrant workers" as "semi-skilled and unskilled for foreign workers," Malaysia will face "a structural demand for foreign workers... and the demand for low-skilled labor is seldom eliminated (to favor) more skilled workers."
Still, the Asean declaration outlines duties and obligations that member-countries that send and receive foreign labor should abide by to protect and respect migrant workers' rights.
Among these duties is for receiving countries to provide migrant workers "who may be victims of discrimination, abuse, exploitation, and violence with adequate access to the legal and judicial system of the receiving states".
Heads of states signed the declaration, including Prime Ministers Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore and Dato Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi of Malaysia, whose countries are the leading destinations of migrant workers and immigrants in the region.
Among Asean countries, the Philippines is the only one that ratified the UN Migrant Workers Convention, in July 1995. Indonesia's and Cambodia's governments signed the Convention both on September 2004, that being the first step to ratify a UN treaty.
But Chia said the pact only covers the management of highly-skilled migrants and expatriates.
"Developing countries will be challenged to negotiate with host countries [so that] other types of workers will be accommodated, not just business people and health professionals," Chia said at a forum organized by EADN and the Philippine Institute of Development Studies.
Integration
Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Luis Cruz said in a forum in Quezon City the migration pact should be seen in a broader context of the Asean vision of economic integration.
Cruz said the pact was hatched along the line of consolidating the region's trade strengths as East Asian economies of neighboring Japan, China, and Korea continue to spiral upward.
This declaration is part of a desire "for the freer movement of goods, capital and labor," Cruz explained.
"It is the wave of the future," he added.
The Asean region hopes to build an "Asean community" by 2015 so that it is at par with other regions such as the EU and the Northern American Free Trade Alliance (Nafta), said the director general for Asean affairs at the DFA.
Cruz explained that along this principle, the Asean has made agreements to mutually recognize engineers and nurses -both skilled occupations- coming from member-countries.
This mutual recognition of skills agreement means Southeast Asian engineers and nurses can just go to any Asean country to work, and their countries' academic and professional qualifications will be respected in Asean countries.
Part of this integration, according to Cruz, is labor migration. The Philippines, Vietnam and Indonesia have been deploying its workforce as migrant workers.
Vietnam has a 27-year-old overseas employment program and its 350,000 workers are in some 40 destination countries, Vu Quoc Huy of Hanoi's National Economics University said during the PIDS-sponsored forum.
Citing 2001 to 2003 data from Indonesia's Department of Manpower and Transmigration, Carunia Mulya Firdusay of the Indonesian Institute of Sciences said some 998,228 migrant workers are in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, The Netherlands, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Saudi Arabia, among others.
Ambassador Rosario Manalo of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said she can only wish for a regional treaty or convention on migrant workers that will include low-skilled workers.
However, Manalo didn't call for a review and possible amendment to the two-month old pact. (OFW Journalism Consortium/Sunnex)
