OFWs on SONA: No Arroyo promise can make us stay

MANILA, Philippines - A few hours after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo delivers her State of the Nation Address (SONA), “Crisaldo", 45, will board the plane to the United Arab Emirates. For Crisaldo, Monday’s SONA will be nothing more than a traffic inconvenience - an additional two hours of negotiating Quezon City ’s main arteries to get to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. From Manila, Crisaldo will have to endure an eight-hour flight to Dubai and two to three days to sneak into Iraq, where he works inside one of the heavily fortified US camps. Crisaldo knows the Philippine government has imposed a 'no deployment policy' in Iraq. He heard the news himself in Mrs Arroyo’s 2004 SONA. On the day of Mrs Arroyo's speech, Filipino truck driver Angelo dela Cruz had just been freed five days earlier by insurgents after he was abducted near the Iraqi city of Fallujah for two weeks. A jubilant Arroyo welcomed De la Cruz home and ordered the deployment of all Filipino workers to the strife-torn country stopped. The President then promised to give her administration a new direction: “Mamamayan Muna (Citizens First)" - an ambitious project to create economic opportunities for all Filipinos at home and abroad. However, four years later, Filipino workers like Crisaldo are still leaving the country in droves. Just recently, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) said that in the first quarter of 2008, almost 400,000 Filipinos left the country to work abroad, an increase of 14 percent over the same period last year. Similarly, remittances from January to April jumped up to $5.4 billion—higher than last year’s $4.7 billion—as more Filipinos sought foreign employment to earn higher wages. On paper it seems like Mrs Arroyo has steered the country toward her goal of a stronger republic that will care for all Filipinos and make overseas employment an option rather than the only choice. But this is far from reality, according to Crisaldo who had to juggle two jobs in Quezon City in 2004 to provide for his six kids. When a friend recruited him for work in Iraq, he didn’t think twice. "They tell us not to go to Iraq because it’s dangerous and we might be abducted or killed. But if we do stay, our families will die uneducated and hungry. Now tell me, which is a better option?" he said. Unlike Crisaldo, 26-year-old Emy Ausejo will leave the country for good on Monday along with 25 other Filipinos. Emy has shelved her engineering diploma back in her hometown in Dumaguete, Negros Oriental to cook and care for elderly people in Taiwan . "My dreams won’t be fulfilled if I don’t migrate," she said. Dismayed over the small paycheck she receives monthly at a publishing company in Manila, Emy was lured to try her luck in Taiwan as a caregiver where she expects to earn more than four times. According to her, if Arroyo’s speech this afternoon can assure her that wages in the country will increase, she will unpack her things and stay. "I hope she can assure that wages here will increase so that people like me won’t go out of the country to earn," she said. Ellene Sana, executive director of the Center for Migrants Advocacy, said the President’s past SONAs contained more misses than hits for the more than eight million Filipino workers scattered across the globe. "Every SONA she praises the OFWs but rarely act on their concerns. Praises for the OFWs should be translated into better services for them," she said. With the absence of decent jobs in the country, Sana predicts that the OFW phenomenon will not end. Decent jobs, according to the International Labor Organization, reflects the aspiration of men and women everywhere to obtain productive work in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity. Simply put, the ILO defines decent work as the complete opposite of the employment situation in the Philippines where an individual’s potential is either ignored or underutilized. "If she [Arroyo] could provide full and decent employment, Filipinos will not leave their home," Sana said. Seven years after Arroyo took the presidency from deposed ruler Joseph Estrada, Filipinos have become visibly tired of her politics. "Every SONA is just lip service," said Chuy, 37, a former government employee turned TNT (Tago ng Tago) in the United States . "People have lost trust in the President so no matter what she says people won’t believe her," she added. If the latest Social Weather Stations survey is any indication of things to come for the Arroyo administration, it is far from the President’s dream in her past SONAs. In its survey from June 27 to 30, SWS said the present administration’s satisfaction rating fell to a record low of minus 49 percent, making it the least popular administration since that of presidents Aquino, Ramos, and Estrada. "I want to hear her resignation as president after violating several provisions in the Constitution," said Gina, 39, a Filipino worker in the Northern Marianas . "If there is someone better to replace her, I will not leave," she said. Just the same, Crisaldo said he’ll tune in on President Arroyo’s SONA this year while he’s on his way to the airport. Despite defying the government's deployment ban to Iraq, Crisaldo said he can still heed the President's order. "If she’ll tell me not to leave, I won’t." - GMANews.TV