MANILA, 7 September 2007 — The costs of Filipino overseas migration outweigh the benefits in terms of social, economic, political and individual losses, a non-governmental organization in the Philippines warned.
Rhodora Abano, advocacy officer of the Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA), told Arab News that an undetermined number of families are breaking up due to spouse’s taking on another partner while the husband or wife is away. Likewise, most children of OFWs have become “materialistic,” asking for more money to compensate for the emotional absence of one or both parents.
Some of the OFW children have also dropped out of school as they find the school “strict” or “boring,” or resorted to early marriages because of teenage promiscuity, or bore children out of wedlock. Worst problem for OFW children is when they fall into drug addiction, gambling or other vices.
OFW families must do something to prevent further escalation of these social problems, Abano said. She said her group detests overseas migration as a “permanent development strategy” and suggests instead “establishing a vibrant and self-reliant Philippine economy” as it encourages OFWs to invest in businesses whatever savings they can bring home.
She explained that the Philippines’ fast becoming a service economy is a national fate that could have been prevented in this time of global competition had the government been keen enough to strengthen the local economy and looked at overseas migration as only a temporary measure to solve unemployment problems of the country.
According to the Department of Labor and Employment, about a million workers leave the Philippines every year for jobs overseas and the current total is 7.9 million, a big portion of which include nurses and other health workers, seamen, domestic helpers, entertainers and IT professionals.
Abano further said that in order to keep our best and brightest at home, the government must work out a national development program that will effectively harness the country’s human resources and justly reward workers for their labor.
It should be a development program that can compete globally in terms of compensation and working conditions. In due time, overseas migration will have become a choice and not a forced option to Filipinos, she said.
