MANILA, Philippines--I believe there is another kind of calamity that has been causing more havoc upon the lives of millions of Filipinos both here and abroad than the natural calamities that visit the Philippines regularly. It has been going on for four decades starting in the early '70s when our countrymen started to leave their land, their homes, and loved ones for greener pastures overseas.
It has made millions of children virtually orphans as they are left by one or both of their parents for jobs abroad; and spouses virtually widows or widowers. This different kind of calamity has a name: The Filipino diaspora. It has put to naught the biblical fiat that no one should put asunder the marriage of man and woman inasmuch as overseas employment has been relentlessly causing the erosion and break-up of thousands of marriages and families.
Absence, it is said, makes one's heart grow fonder. But more often, insofar as innumerable OFWs are concerned, absence makes their heart grow fonder for fellow OFWs. The same is true of hundreds of spouses left in the home front who, out of sheer loneliness for their absent spouses, become vulnerable to temptations.
Hence marriages, treated by our Civil Code as an “inviolable institution” and by the Catholic Church and other religions as a “sacrament,” have been crumbling continually for decades now and there's no sign of its letting up.
OFW Family Club
The OFW Family Club which I and my family organized eight years ago as a support group for OFWs and families, has a subgroup known as the Kinalasan, acronym for the Kababaihang Iniwan Na ng mga Lalaking Sumama sa ibang Nililiyag. It was founded by my wife Minerva. It has in its roster OFW wives and children who have virtually become widows and orphans after they have been abandoned by their husbands and fathers.
The club has a group of volunteer lawyers headed by Roger Evasco and Jose Maronilla who assist the members for free in filing claims for support with the courts. We have been busy in the club writing to ambassadors and labor attachés to locate OFW husbands and fathers overseas to remind them of their statutory obligations to provide financial support to their families.
The Kinalasan is now headed by Jovielyn, an abandoned wife with two children whose husband is a hotel worker in Macau. With the help of the club, she now receives a monthly allowance from her estranged husband who lives with another OFW in Macau. Jovielyn is actively assisted by her fellow “abandonados” in playing the role of “cheerers” or “morale supporters” to fellow Kinalasan members, such as Noraida.
Broken marriage
Noraida has her own sad story to tell. Sometime in 2003, her husband Karim went to Jeddah to work as an aircon technician. Later, Noraida also found work in Doha as a housemaid. Her Qatari employer raped and impregnated her and sent her home while her pregnancy was not yet obvious. Later, she gave birth to a black-skinned boy with Arab features. Her husband understood her helpless situation and forgave her. Noraida gave birth to two more kids of their own.
But eventually Karim found another woman in Jeddah for whom he built a home in Antipolo, Rizal. The club threatened Karim with a lawsuit constraining him to settle with Noraida with a monthly support that is so meager, Noraida laments, she had to seek regular help from her sister.
Gov't clueless
The devastation wrought by the diaspora is aggravated by a government that is clueless about what it is supposed to do to come to the rescue of the OFWs and the loved ones they leave behind. It is a government that is as clueless as it was about what to do when “Ondoy” and “Pepeng” relieved themselves of unwanted floodwaters upon our land.
The question now is, can we rely on this government to come to the rescue of the OFWs in the face of the unceasing devastations that they are being subjected to?
We do not talk merely of their painful separation from their loved ones; of marriages being broken; of employment contracts being brazenly violated by employers. We have to talk, more urgently, of countless of rapes being committed on a daily basis upon our hapless women, especially those who work as domestic helpers in millions of households of complete strangers.
Many of them are back in the Philippines like Jovielyn and Noraida, doing their best to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. Many have gone mad, many have gone six feet below the ground with the untold stories of their harrowing experiences. In the files of the club are countless of sad stories about OFWs. They are open to everyone who may be interested to research or to lend a helping hand.
OFW profile
Of the eight million OFWs, there are one million professionals such as doctors, engineers, architects, nurses, seafarers, and others; two million skilled like master mechanics, electricians, carpenters; three million semi-skilled like hotel workers, restaurant waiters, and others; two million domestic helpers, caregivers, and others.
The two million domestic helpers are females. They are the ones who, by the very environment of their jobs, are highly vulnerable to all sorts of abuses, from non-payment or underpayment of salaries, to physical and verbal abuse, acts of lasciviousness, and worse, rapes. The abusers, criminals as they are, do not discriminate whether the victims of their bestial instincts are virgins or not; married or unmarried; teeners or in their 40s; Christians or Muslims or neither.
I was labor attaché to the United Arab Emirates from 1983 to 1989. At the time, the total population of Filipino domestic helpers in the UAE was only 15,000 out of a total population of only 80,000. The total worldwide at the time was only five million. At any given day during my watch, the number of runaway housemaids that I sheltered in my family's three-bedroom apartment averaged 10.
Millions of maids
After solving the problems of some of them, others would take their place. At present, the population of Filipino domestic helpers in the UAE has sextupled to 100,000 out of a total population of 300,000. The total number of domestic helpers worldwide in 1989 was only half a million as compared to today's total of two million.
Last June, former President Joseph Estrada asked me to accompany him, former Senator Loi Estrada and their son, Senator Jinggoy Estrada to Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Kuwait. I was with the three when they visited and donated plane tickets to runaway housemaids at the OWWA centers there. There were 120 runaway housemaids in Abu Dhabi, 130 in Dubai, and 160 in Kuwait. The number of runaway maids has obviously grown by leaps and bounds.
Out of the 10 domestic helpers who sought shelter in my apartment when I was labor attaché, an average of three complained of rape, and two of attempted rape or acts of lasciviousness. The rest complained of breach of contract, physical abuse. Most rape victims would ask not to file a complaint with the police for fear that the Filipino community would get wind of it and their husbands, parents, or neighbors back home would come to know of their ordeal. They would prefer to keep their suffering to themselves.
Sex perverts
It is difficult to extrapolate from the number of those who were victims of rape during my time as labor attaché to arrive at the current number now of Filipinos all over the world who have become victims of rape.
But considering that there are now two million domestic helpers out there in the world toiling inside the confines of employers' households as compared to only half a million in 1989, it is reasonable to conclude that hundreds are being raped or sexually harassed every day, but still choose to just keep their agony to themselves until they die. Not a few employers consider their housemaids as chattels or as members of their harem.
This government, wittingly or unwittingly, has been playing the role of providers of the insatiable sexual appetites of rapists and perverts all over the world.
The law is clear. Section 27 of Republic Act No. 8042, otherwise known as the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act, says: “The protection of the Filipino migrant workers and the promotion of their welfare, in particular, and the protection of the dignity and fundamental rights and freedoms of the Filipino citizens abroad, in general, shall be the highest priority concerns of the secretary of foreign affairs and the Philippine foreign service posts.” The other two concerns of the Department of Foreign Affairs are: economic diplomacy and furtherance of national security.
Romulo's role
Notwithstanding the clear mandate of our DFA, we have a foreign secretary in the person of Alberto Romulo who is apparently clueless about his role as the vicar of Philippine foreign policy. It is of public knowledge that it is Vice President Noli de Castro who is playing out Romulo's role insofar as the OFWs are concerned.
Who makes the pronouncements every time an OFW is about to be executed? Who gives out instructions for the rescue of kidnapped Filipino seafarers in Somalia and other crises involving OFWs? It has always been Noli de Castro. But the man's background and experience have never been honed toward the conduct of foreign policy and service. Unlike Romulo, the man has not gone through the burning furnace of the Commission on Appointments to determine whether or not he has the competence to venture into the realm of our country's “highest priority concerns” in foreign affairs.
We fervently wish this government shed itself off its affliction and issue forthwith several directives in line with Section 27 of Republic Act 8042: One, to issue an executive order requiring ambassadors to exercise the extraordinary diligence of a good father of a family in overseeing the welfare and protection of OFWs in their host countries. Their job performance should be measured on how true and dedicated they and their subordinates are in discharging their roles as surrogate fathers and substitute families of the OFWs; two, the government must likewise put more teeth to the citizens' arrest law by requiring the police to swiftly come to the assistance of victims of illegal recruitment who decide to arrest on the spot their illegal recruiters; three, the government should authorize ambassadors and consuls to withhold approval or cancel the passports of irresponsible OFW husbands and fathers until they resume their support to their dependents;
Four, using its profound power and influence upon every sector in society, the government should prod big businesses, especially those who have tremendously benefited from OFW remittances like Henry Sy's SM, Lucio Tan's airlines, the Ayalas and the Villars, Gotianum's real estate conglomerates, Manny Pangilinan's and the Indonesians' PLDT, Globe's, and the Lhuillier's remittance companies and other banks owned by Tans, Sys, Yuchengcos, to contribute to a private fund that will underwrite the education of children who have been orphaned by the death of their fathers or mothers overseas;
SSS coverage
Five, the government must acknowledge in more concrete terms the major OFW contributions to the economy by placing them under the coverage of the Social Security System to enable them to avail of a loan, and most especially, its retirement benefits. The government must play the role of being their “surrogate” employer by paying the counterpart amount that employers in the Philippines are normally required to pay;
