Food and freedom, jobs and justice

KUWAIT - To the simple but pragmatic minds of the OFWs here in the Middle East, the celebration of the Philippine Independence yesterday should be reviewed against a higher criterion of economic freedom rather than political. The Americans taught us to overpoliticize our independence, with strong emphasis on the Bill of Rights, on freedom and justice. The OFWs would rather focus on freedom from want, would rather stress on food and jobs, rather than on such high-sounding and ephemeral concepts and principles as enshrined in the Constitution.

The OFWs know precisely that there is a conflict in perspectives between, on the one hand, the political emphasis by the highly politicized civil society, and on the other hand, the government’s stress on fighting poverty and generating jobs for our people. In short, while the government stresses the Economic, the highly charged (politically) masses are focusing on the Political. This column takes the side of the Freedom Day celebrators who focuses on the Economic.

Freedom, besieged by the crisis

No government of any labor-sending country can merely fold its hand, while the global financial crisis poses a grave and imminent danger to the job security of its migrant workers. No leader of any developing economy can just watch the global labor markets being controlled and dominated by major players, without doing something positive, concrete and strategic if only to protect the competitive edge of his country’s human capital, especially the migrant workers.

Thousands and thousands of jobs are being lost daily in the US, Europe, Asia and yes, also here in the Middle East today. Employer companies are in an endemic mode of massive retrenchment, redundancies, rightsizing, whilst many other firms are already in the state of closures and bankruptcies.

Of course, comparatively speaking, here in the Middle East, the global financial crisis is just starting to spread its tentacles and is threatening to spew the venom of the dreaded job cuts and forced retirements and dismissals. And so, it is time to move. Such a scenario calls for a decisive and quick intervention.

Government’s strategic move

No less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo convened an Employment Forum in Dubai on 12-13 April 2009, where hundreds of employers from KSA, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain, Libya and other Middle Eastern economies, together with pillars of the Philippine recruitment agencies conferred with DOLE, POEA, OWWA and POLO officials on how to maximize employment opportunities for Filipinos. DOLE Secretary Marianito D. Roque also followed this up with series of strategic interventions to facilitate employment. Nowadays, LGUs and NGOs all over the country are helping the government conduct job fairs.

The Philippine Mission in Kuwait, led by a visionary Ambassador, H.E Ambassador Ricardo M. Endaya, should be commended for cultivating the private initiative of the Asian culture Network in organizing that Employment Summit earlier on 28-28 Jan 2009. The Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Kuwait finds it, not only appropriate, but also imperative, to lend all-out support to such a private sector-led Summit for such initiative truly promotes employment, which is a constitutional mandate entrusted on the Department of Labor and Employment to spearhead in its implementation.

Employment with safety nets

The POLO-Kuwait however hastens to interject that our constitutional mandate to promote employment should not lead us to neglect our equally primordial mandate to afford full protection to labor, especially our OFWs and to assure them, living wages as well as just and humane conditions of work.

Even in the midst of a global financial crisis, we should not push our workers to accept dirty, difficult, dangerous, deceptive and degrading jobs. Because we have world class quality of workers, we should make sure that they are justly compensated and should be treated with respect and with due regard for their human dignity. Because OFWs are paying a huge social cost in pursuit of economic freedom, government officials like Labor Attachés should fight for their utmost protection and welfare.

The need of the times is no longer political freedom. The struggle of the people is for economic freedom. Freedom from want, freedom from unemployment. Freedom from social injustices and exploitations.

And the government leads in the pursuit of this struggle. And the fight is still on! We need to keep the fighting spirit.

Tuloy ang laban! Mao nga nag-antus ko diri sa disyerto, nag-alagad sa mga OFWs, biniyaan ang mga mahal sa kinabuhi ug tinalikdan ang kaharuhay isip corporate executive ug University Law Professor. Gamay kong tampo alang sa atong demokrasya.

* * *

Email: [email protected]