EDITORIAL - Department of Overseas Filipinos

Before the year will end, a separate department that will focus on the concerns of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos working overseas will start to operate as proposed by no less than President Rodrigo Duterte.

Acting on the president’s proposal, neophyte senator Bong Go filed Senate Bill 202, or the Department of Overseas Filipinos Act of 2019, seeking the establishment of a department that will oversee all issues regarding Filipinos working abroad.

Once the Department of Overseas Filipinos takes effect, it will handle all the functions of the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency, Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, Department of Foreign Affairs-Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs, the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, and the International Labor Affairs Bureau.

It will also be the third department created in less than five years following the establishment of the Department of Transportation and the Department of Information and Communications Technology, which used to be the Department of Transportation and Communication.

Lawmakers should rally behind Go’s bill and make it an urgent priority for the sake of millions of Filipinos now working in other countries who had to endure homesickness and all the risks just to provide for their families.

By creating a department that fully assists them, it is time for the government to truly honor our OFWs whom it brands as modern-day heroes and whose remittances have kept the wheels of the national economy turning.

In order for Congress to prioritize the proposed measure, OFWs and their families and other stakeholders should lobby for Duterte to certify the OFW Department Bill as urgent for it to be immediately passed into law.

The Department of Overseas Filipinos should have been established a long time ago. Amid the abuses of Filipinos doing menial jobs abroad by their employers and against applicants by unscrupulous recruiters, it’s unfortunate that the government has never been religious in looking after their welfare.