Use excess OWWA fee for OFW loan - recruiters

The recruitment sector has asked the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) to use the excess fees collected from overseas Filipino workers as loan assistance to OFWs instead of giving them refunds. In a statement over the weekend, Jackson Gan, vice-president of FAME (Federated Association of Manpower Exporters) said there is no need to refund the over-payment that the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration collected from OFWs. A recruitment group last week called for an investigation into the supposed overcharging of OFW fees. POEA reportedly collected $25-membership fee from OFWs based on an exchange rate of P51 to $1. This prompted Senate President Manuel Villar Jr to file a resolution and asked POEA and OWWA to explained the fees paid by departing OFWs. Villar said the fees should be based on the exchange rate of P41 to $1, or P1,025, instead of the current fee of P1,275. The POEA and OWWA agreed to use the P42:$1 conversion rate instead but this would take effect only beginning January 1, 2008. Gan said there is no need to refund the over-payment and instead just use the money for workers assistance loan. “OWWA should allocate more funds to help ex-OFWs for their livelihood projects and welfare assistance centers in countries where there is a high rate of welfare cases. The government should [ask] Congress to pass the bill setting up a Workers Bank for the benefit of our hard working OFWs so that overseas workers can avail themselves of loans and financial assistance from the P7-billion OWWA trust fund," he said. Gan also lambasted OWWA Administrator Marianito Roque for saying that recruiters are the ones complaining and not the workers. “The reduction of the OWWA fee will benefit the more than 500,000 re-hires or balikbayans who are required to pay the membership fee every time they are processed for their return to the jobsites and the OEC (overseas employment certificate) from the POEA. The re-hires cannot leave the country without the OEC since they are classified as overseas workers," he explained. He said that agencies (land-based sector) only generate 300,000 new hires every year and the sea-based sector deploys around 200,000 seamen who are basically also re-hires since they are returning to their ships or cruise liners with new contracts. Gan said the entire recruitment industry represented by the two largest associations in the country (FAME and PASEI or Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc.) comprising 1,000 agencies demanded that the reduction in OWWA fees be implemented immediately and not on Jan. 1, 2008 as announced by POEA Administrator Rosalinda Baldoz He said FAME and PASEI welcomed the decision of the OWWA Board to reduce fees following the gain of the pesos against the dollar. "However the reduction should benefit vacationing OFWs numbering over 100,000 who are here for the holidays," Gan said. Baldoz said POEA should not be accused of overcharging because it only collected the fees based on the rate imposed by the OWWA for processing work papers. The POEA and OWWA move, however, did not satisfy Villar, who said that the reduced conversion rate should be used immediately. Villar pushed for a Senate investigation into the “propriety and rationality of other similar fees imposed on OFWs." The POEA and OWWA, he said, should also account for the excess collections since [the two agencies] used the P51:$1 conversion rate. - GMANews.TV