OFW group, recruiter slam pre-deployment SSS contributions

An overseas Filipino worker (OFW) advocacy group and a labor recruiter voiced their dissent against a requirement that OFWs should solely shoulder their SSS contributions and make several payments before they would be permitted to work abroad.

In a Saturday press statement, LBS E-Recruitment Solutions President Lito B. Soriano complained that the government requirement for OFWs to pay pre-deployment SSS contributions, as well as Philhealth and PAG-IBIG contributions, would "only promote suffering, hardships" and create "another Calvary to climb."

Soriano added that making the OFWs make several monthly contributions before being considered SSS members was “repressive.”

Marcia Sadicon, the President of the Advocates and Keepers Organization of OFW (AKOOFW), also opposed the SSS, Philhealth and PAG-IBIG mandatory contributions as a pre-requisite for an Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC).

Similarly, recruitment consultant and migration expert Emmanuel Geslani said that the SSS and the other government institutions should not make the OFWs their “milking cow."

According to RA 11199 or the "Social Security Act of 2018," all land-based OFWs were to solely shoulder their SSS monthly premiums. — Angelica Y. Yang/DVM, GMA News