OVER 500 migrant stakeholders attended on Wednesday, December 14, during the celebration of the International Migrants Day at Ateneo de Davao University (AdDU), focuses on mainstreaming the issues of Overseas Filipino Workers and including the migrant’s agenda in the discussion on peace.
Mindanao Migrants Center for Empowering Actions Inc. (MMCEAI) executive director Inorisa Sialana-Elento said that this year’s theme is anchored on creating spaces for migrants and their families on the issues of peace process in order to achieve inclusive growth.
The number of OFWs is now pegged at 16 million in 195 countries; however, Elento said that they do not have the accurate data. It is now part of their agenda to push for the comprehensive profile of the migrants and their families.
Part of the profiling will be the monitoring of the situation and condition of the migrant’s families.
They urged the government for the creation/generation of local sustainable jobs that are decent enough to survive and provide opportunities for families to subsist and create spaces for development and self-employment.
MMCEAI, which headed the event, stressed that “worker's rights are human rights, and that migrants rights are human rights”. Part of the agenda is their campaign for the creation of the office of the undersecretary for Overseas Filipino Workers Affairs (Usec-Ofwa) within the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole).
Usec-Ofwa will exercise oversight and harmonize the interlocking functions of the various agencies and instrumentalities within the Dole that ensure efficient delivery of relevant programs and services for OFW well-being and development.
This agenda, Elento said, was based on the series of consultations and workshops conducted with returned migrants, their families, Anak OFWs and stakeholders who work and take part in the discourse on international labor migration 2015.
As of now, the government is now discussing the Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-Economic Reforms (Caser) wherein part of it is the working people and migrants is part of the sector.
Lawyer Antonio Arellano, one of the Government of the Philippines (GRP) peace panel for his part said that one of the major issue involving OFW are all basically economic issues, reform in the economic policies and programs.
These are among the substantial issues and programs being tackled in the negotiation particularly by committee on Caser.
He noted that he will submit the OFW agenda to the Caser committee to be included in the discussion by their consultants and resource persons.
“We have specialist on international trade labor and economy. This will be the consultants who will tackle that especially the technical matter,” he said.
Once they have gone through the formulation of the programs to address those issues, then that will be discussed it in the meeting and eventually with the panel.