Repatriate our OFWs

The government is having a hard time repatriating some 10,000 Filipino contract workers in different countries in the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent.

Of the 10,000 stranded OFWs, 5,000 are in Saudi Arabia. The rest are in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Oman, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.

All of them have expired work contracts and want to come home. Most of them now stay with their former employers that can’t rehire them because of the pandemic.

The Philippine embassies in the above-cited countries don’t have enough space to accommodate them.

The Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) authorizes only 2,000 people to enter the country daily. Most of them are returning residents and foreigners with businesses here.

The IATF said returning OFWs don’t have enough allocation in the 2,000 slots daily because of the lack of accredited quarantine facilities.

However, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) contradicts the IATF, saying hundreds are being discharged daily by the quarantine facilities.

Some recruitment agencies and their foreign principals are willing to charter jetliners to bring back their OFWs.

The recruitment agencies and their principals propose an increase in the passenger arrivals daily from 2,000 to 3,000 daily with 1,000 reserved for the stranded OFWs.

If the IATF allows returning OFWs on charter flights daily, all of them will be in the country in due time.

The IATF should consider the anguish and homesickness of the stranded OFWs who already have airline tickets.

The early repatriation of the stranded OFWs would be an act of recognition, given their role in keeping the country’s economy afloat.

After all, OFWs earn billions of dollars yearly for the country.

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The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) says the United Kingdom needs at least 50,000 nurses until 2024.

Our nurses can easily fill up the needs of the United Kingdom.

The country has 500,000 registered nurses and only 40 percent, or 200,000, are actually employed, according to the Philippine Nurses Association.

And that’s not counting the nursing graduates our colleges and universities churn out every year.

The government allows only 5,000 medical professionals – doctors, nurses, medical technologists and health care workers – to leave the country.

The number of medical professionals allowed to work abroad should be increased as they will contribute to the country’s foreign reserves.

The number of registered nurses, nursing graduates and other medical professionals who are not working contributes to the country’s unemployment rate.

Our hospitals, aside from underpaying the overworked nurses, also can’t accommodate all of the unemployed nurses and other health professionals even if they want to.

There are just more nurses and other medical professionals than hospitals and clinics in the country can hire properly.

So, what’s the logic of preventing them to work abroad and earn money for their families and contribute to the country’s economy?

Let’s be honest: We don’t pay our medical professionals well, and that’s why they want to work abroad.

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Six out of 10 Filipinos are malnourished, according to studies.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) placed the exact number of Filipinos who are “food insecure” at 59 million.

Why are Filipinos malnourished? Because most of us eat rice more than we eat viands or dishes containing meat, fish, seafood and vegetables.

The Philippines and China are the world’s top rice importers.

China has a population of 1.4 billion compared to the country’s 111 million.

China imports 4 million tons of rice while the Philippines imports 2.1 million tons.

Ratio-wise, we consume more rice than China.

That’s the reason millions of Filipinos are diabetic. Many eat so much rice during breakfast, lunch and dinner.

A restaurant chain that serves an unlimited amount of rice to its customers is an example of how voracious for rice Filipinos are.

I remember the time when I was a police reporter assigned to the graveyard (night) shift at the Manila Bulletin, which gave employees working overtime free meals at the canteen.

I would have a cup of rice and have a variety of viands.

My co-employees at the pasting and printing department, who ate at the same time as I did, would laugh at me.

“Mas maraming ulam ang kinakain ni Tulfo kesa kanin (Tulfo eats more viands than rice),” one of them commented.

My dinner mates filled their plates with rice, such that there was not enough space for viands. And they would have multiple servings of mountains of rice on their plates, with less viands.

There’s a standing joke that if you overfill your plate with rice, you are a construction worker.

Many Filipinos who have diabetes are poor. They have unhealthy food choices, such as eating mounds of rice with tuyo (dried fish).

The Department of Health should teach poor people how to have proper and balanced diets.

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Monica Tierra, 68, former chief of the general services division of the Philippine Children’s Hospital in Diliman, Quezon, is profuse in her thanks to lawyer Nelson Borja for saving her from going to prison.

Tierra was convicted in December of 2016 by the Quezon City Regional Trial Court and meted out a prison term of six years and two months on graft charges.

All her retirement benefits were also forfeited.

Tierra claims the graft charges were trumped up.

Penniless, the convicted former hospital official sought the assistance of Isumbong mo kay Tulfo, a citizens’ tribune.

I asked Borja, an excellent trial attorney, to help Tierra pro bono or for free.

Borja asked for a retrial of Tierra’s graft case; Tierra was acquitted.
Her acquittal, she said, was among the happiest moments of her life.