Monday, February 4, 2008

New POEA guidelines on "direct hiring" is anti-migrant worker

The Philippine Overseas Employment  Administration (POEA) issued its new guidelines on direct hiring of Filipino  migrant workers on 18 December 2007 effective 15 January this year. 
 
 The Filipino Community Services and  Information Network (FILCOMSIN), an alliance of 40 Filipino migrant worker  organizations in Hong Kong, oppose the  guidelines on the following grounds:
   
These new guidelines are a    resurrected version of the POEA Memorandum Circular 41 issued in 1994 banning    the direct hiring of Filipino migrant workers for abroad.  The Filipino migrant workers community    in Hong Kong vigorously opposed the ban then    because it was against the interests of countless Filipino migrant workers who    were benefiting from the direct hire scheme. In 2001, the migrant-led campaign    against the ban successfully forced the Philippine government to revoke its    implementation in Hong Kong through the DOLE    Order 11, Series of 2001.  We    believe that the conditions that motivated the Filipino migrant community in    Hong Kong  to campaign against the banning of    direct hires have not changed. The new restrictions directly contravene the    DOLE revocation of the banning of direct hiring in Hong    Kong. We see no justification for these new restrictions on    direct hiring now being imposed by the Philippine government.   
  
    
The Philippine government¡¦s claim    that the new restrictions contained in these new Guidelines on direct hiring    will provide greater protection for Filipino migrant workers is old empty    rhetoric and holds no promise for us.  Abuses and exploitation of Filipino    migrant workers persist because of the deregulation of the labor export    industry by the government to protect the interests of profiteering    recruitment agencies and other allied businesses.  These business interests and the    government are totally dependent on one another and will never put the    interests of the migrant workers ahead of theirs. 
 
Time and time again, the government  justifies its new rulings and guidelines in the name of our rights and interests  as Filipino migrant workers.  In  actual fact , not only have these instruments not made any real impact on our  lives, they have legitimized   extractions of new  revenues  for the government and profits for recruitment and placement agencies at our  expense.
 
The POEA 2006 Guidelines on  Household Service Workers (HSW) is a classic example. We have been made to  believe that the no placement  fee  policy under these guidelines is in the best interest of Filipino domestic  workers going abroad.  Information  being gathered by Filipino migrant rights advocates groups in Hong Kong after  the new policy was introduced overwhelmingly shows  that  a typical outbound domestic worker now  pays an average of 10 to 12,000 pesos for training fees on top of placement fees  amounting to 90 to 100,000 pesos which Hong Kong-based placement agencies  continue to charge and share with their Philippine recruiters. Fully aware of  the charges being extracted from domestic workers despite its no placement fee  policy, the Philippine government is now saying that it has no jurisdiction over  Hong Kong companies who are overcharging ¡V an  obvious point raised by many when the policy was first introduced. Meanwhile,  the charging of training fees by training centers run by  private recruitment agencies has surged  ahead and without any scrutiny and accountability by the POEA and its sister  agency, TESDA.  
 
 We are convinced that the new  guidelines on direct hire are bound to follow the same pattern.   The imposition of a US$ 5000 repatriation  bond and US$ 3000 performance bond is a new form of extraction which will have  even further negative effects on Filipino migrant workers.  These new requirements are likely to lead  to a number of scenarios:  
 
 a) employers  will pass on the charges to the workers
 b) employers  will recruit via the private recruitment agencies instead of going through the  hassles of  the direct hire scheme  under the new guidelines.  The  migrant workers will be at the losing end once again. They will be deprived of  an opportunity to be recruited with less or without costs on their part under  the previous direct hire arrangement.
 c) employers  will recruit somewhere else which would mean less job opportunities for us and  would expose prospective migrants in dire economic situation and desperate to  find work abroad  to illegal  recruitment and to overcharging private agencies.    
 
 3. The absence of any reference to  the implications of the new guidelines on ¡¥direct hires¡¦ whose papers are in  process confirms the government¡¦s ill-thought policy-making processes and  insensitivity towards these affected migrant workers.
 
 In conclusion, FILCOMSIN demands  that the Philippine government scrap the new POEA guidelines on direct  hire.  We further demand that the  government maintain DOLE  Order NO.  11, series of 2001. 
 
 We hold the Department of Labor and  its agencies, POEA and TESDA,   accountable for the continuing extraction of fees from Filipino domestic  workers by placement agencies in destination countries and by Philippine  training agencies in cahoots with Philippine recruitment agencies. 

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