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Three new empowerment
subjects
OFWs must know, exercise
April 10, 2003 , Saudi
Gazette, page 3
The Presidential Adviser on Overseas Filipino Communities
Secretary Heherson T. Alvarez, who is on a swing-visit
to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf has brought three subjects
of empowerment for some seven million Overseas Filipino
Workers (OFWs) around the world.
The first is the OFWs absentee voting right. "You
have to exercise your right to vote in the forthcoming
May 2004 national election," Alvarez told groups
of Filipino workers he has had dialogue with during
his visit in their camps in Greater Dammam area
and Jubail last Tuesday.
Secondly, he said it is important for OFWs to know
their rights as migrant workers under the International
Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All
Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families, which
will enter into force on July 1, 2003.
"OFWs are now part of that global protection
of rights of migrant workers guaranteed by the United
Nations and therefore it is essential that you know
your rights and status because Filipino migration
has become an integral national reality," he
told OFWs.
The third empowerment of OFWs is their direct and
active participation in the preparation of financial
investment package now being prepared by the Central
Bank and the Philippine banking sector. He said
the investment package would tap remittances of
OFWs and channel them to projects like housing,
that would directly benefit them.
"The success of these (empowerment) depend
on OFWs and you must directly do it yourselves and
not wait for the government," Alvarez challenged.
"Filipino migrant workers are talented, very
capable, and surely they can achieve these goals,"
he added.
On the question of registration and polling centers
for OFWs in Eastern Province in the forthcoming
2004 election, he said Filipino workers in the region
must present all their suggestion and options to
resolve the issue. He said the Philippine Embassy
and Commission on Elections would support whatever
plans and suggestions to be presented by the Filipino
communities in the region.
"As a community, you can work as NGO and become
partner of the COMELEC in resolving the issue of
registration and polling places," he said.
Because of the increasing global migration of Filipinos,
they must know their rights under the UN migrant
workers convention, Alvarez said. So far, the convention
has been ratified or acceded to by 21 states namely
Azerbaijan, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Cape Verde, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador,
Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Mexico, Morocco, Philippines,
Senegal, Seychelles, Sri Lanka, Tajikistan, Uganda
and Uruguay.
There are over 150 million migrants around the world,
including migrant workers, among them Filipinos.
The convention seeks the prevention and elimination
of exploitation of migrant workers. In particular,
it seeks to put an end to the illegal or clandestine
recruitment and trafficking of migrant workers and
to discourage employment of migrant workers in an
irregular or undocumented situation.
The convention provides a set of binding international
standards to address the treatment, welfare, and
human rights of both documented and undocumented
migrants, as well as their obligations and responsibilities
on the part of sending and receiving states.
Alvarez has urged Filipino organizations and associations
to conduct seminars and dialogues on the migrant
workers convention and to know their rights.
The some seven million Filipino migrant workers
around the world remit about $8 billion every year.
According to Alvarez, out of this huge remittance,
the government plans to establish financial investment
package that would directly benefit OFWs and their
families.
He urged OFWs, therefore, to take the initiative
to tell the government what projects they prefer
and their role in implementing the financial package
schemes.
OFWs in Eastern Province are positively responding
to the challenge of Alvarez. Community leaders are
now planning to brain storm among themselves and
set the initiative going on. "It is time that
we do things ourselves," they said after meeting
Alvarez.
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