There is no doubt that the statistics pertaining to last year’s OFW remittances brought to fore the resiliency of our migrant labor sector, posting a stronger-than expected 5.6 percent to a record $17.3 billion in 2009 despite the global economic crisis.

The cash sent home by Filipinos working abroad, exceeding the government’s original target of $17.1 billion, accounted for 10.8 percent of the country’s gross domestic product last year.

Recognizing the key role of OFWs in our national economy, even World Bank country director Bert Hofman said in an interview that the Philippines avoided the worst of the global crisis in 2009, “thanks to higher than expected growth in remittances.”

Indeed, our legions of OFWs deployed around the world have kept our economy afloat during rough and difficult times with their much-needed remittances. Incidentally, the United States still remains the country’s biggest source of remittances, followed by Canada, Saudi Arabia, Britain, Japan and Singapore.

The rosy OFW remittance figures debunked earlier predictions made by many analysts that remittances from nearly 9 million overseas workers would drop in 2009 owing to their expectation that jobs abroad would dwindle amid the global financial crisis.

Fortunately, government efforts to find job openings and opportunities for offshore Filipinos coupled with a sustained demand for skilled workers such as engineers, medical practitioners and teachers worked wonders to ensure inflow of remittances from abroad.

Moreover, most countries in the Middle East managed not to get burned by the economic firestorm that swept across the globe. Saudi Arabia even absorbed into its job market many Filipinos who lost their jobs elsewhere.

Despite the encouraging and rosy facts and figures behind the OFW remittances, however, we can never continue to turn a blind eye to the high social cost of labor migration on OFW families and the harrowing tales of hardship involving our womenfolk working in foreign lands and unfamiliar cultures.

Perhaps due to the rising decibel of political noise pollution you may not be aware of the hunger strike reportedly staged by Pinays, mostly caregivers, in Saudi Arabia in protest of harsh work conditions.

This, as if you did not know, is a recurring tale of woes involving helpless Filipinas working as caregivers or domestic helpers (DHs, sometimes mockingly referred to as Die Hard Filipinas). It is a sad story that happens all the time and precisely because of its familiarity and frequency we must guard against the tendency of becoming numb and jaded.

Especially the government. Thus, all State agencies mandated to protect and safeguard the interest and welfare of OFWs must close ranks and exert greater vigilance at the forefront. They are supposedly the gatekeepers who see to it that everything is in order before any Filipino is deployed for work abroad.

However, the government protective shield for OFWs is punctured with holes through which illegal and unscrupulous recruiters could creep and eventually make many Filipino workers regret the day they left the Philippine soil who, in their dreamy search of the proverbial greener pasture, instead got a harsh and rude awakening.

For the common good of our OFWs all stakeholders must also come into play like the advocacy groups working for migrants’ rights. For one, concerning the aforesaid OFW woes in Saudi Arabia, Migrante International has sought permanent ban on “a notorious Saudi firm” identified as Annasban which was “disqualified from participating in the overseas employment program in 2005 due to a number of previous complaints against the company.”

The ban was lifted in 2008 after a Philippine Labor Attache in Riyadh said the cases had been resolved and the company had reformed. It is disheartening to know, as pointed out by Migrante, that during the three-year ban the company managed to recruit via local manpower placement firms.
Email: businessagenda_report@yahoo.com.ph