Barely a few months into his administration, President Rodrigo Duterte pledged to create a so-called Overseas Workers Bank that will supposedly be funded by remittances from Filipino overseas workers and mandated to provide them loans for businesses and other financial aid.
Whether that would form part of President Duterte’s promised announcement during his Labor Day visit in Cebu today remains to be seen but it does gain some significance in light of the government’s recent strained diplomatic relations with the Kuwaiti government.
President Duterte’s call for Kuwaiti overseas workers to come home may be seen as ludicrous and illogical by many who fear that the country’s labor force may be unable to accommodate them.
To say that the President didn’t think things through when he made that call to Kuwaiti overseas workers may be understating its impact on the strained relations between the country and Kuwait who, while remaining a valuable trade partner, was unable to see the abuses committed by some of its citizens on Filipino employees.
Which brings us back to that so-called Overseas Workers Bank and other safety net measures that the Duterte administration may have or could have prepared to cushion the effect of more than 200,000 displaced workers who may or may not have saved enough (either because they were underpaid or had loans to pay or both) in the event that their contracts with their Kuwaiti employers end.
While employees here in the country continually had to negotiate for higher pay to cope with higher taxes and even higher standards of living, overseas contract workers (OCWs) are often regarded as a little better or more well off than their domestic counterparts since they are paid with foreign currency.
What is not mentioned is the constant sacrifices made to earn that foreign currency particularly in quality time lost due to distance from loved ones, though that distance is somewhat offset thanks to those pricey mobile devices that allow them to talk to each other live and face to face even if on different time zones.
Duterte’s predecessor, former president Benigno Aquino III, made a promise to overseas workers that there will come a time when the economy would improve to such an extent that they could have the option to either work and stay abroad or work and stay home for good in the country.
That time has not yet come and now under the Duterte administration, overseas workers in countries whose citizens have not been so kind to Filipinos don’t have that option.
Instead they are being persuaded, nay told to leave Kuwait for good and stay at home where an uncertain economic future still awaits.