Marcos cautions gov’t to go easy on creating DOFil

MINERVA BC NEWMAN

CEBU CITY – Senator Imee Marcos cautioned the government on rushing to establish a Department of Filipinos Overseas (DOFil) without resolving the issues that will hamper its effective operation as a Cabinet-level agency.

According to Marcos among the issues include the government’s tight budget amid the pandemic; the lack of specialized training for DOFil’s future officers and personnel and the overlapping functions and programs that remain unresolved among different government agencies.

“I am not against a new and discrete government agency for our beleaguered OFWs, but the establishment of a full-blown department is not a magic wand that will make our OFWs’ woes simply and instantly disappear. For one, there is no P1.1 billion to be pulled out of the government’s hat,” Marcos said.

The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) said during a Senate hearing in February that the P1.1-billion minimum budget required to create DOFil does not yet include funding to implement the potential department’s programs.

Marcos added that practical and critical solution in these financially challenged times may be an expansion of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) integrating it into the new agency and extending its presence regionally with satellite and mobile offices.

Through Senate Bill 407, Marcos is pushing for the creation of the National Overseas Employment Authority (NOEA) that will absorb the POEA, the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration (OWWA), and other OFW service offices in the labor, foreign affairs, and social welfare departments.

“We can most likely assist our OFWs faster and quicker by expanding and strengthening POEA, OWWA, Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) and the other offices of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and international desks of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD),” Marcos stated.

Marcos added that downsizing the DOFil will keep the government from replicating the “sorry examples of so-called departments of illusion,” citing the Department of Human Settlements and Urban Development (DHSUD), Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT), and Department of Science and Technology (DOST) as existing in name but short of funding, adequate personnel, or sometimes even measurable objectives.

Staffing DOFil is not just a simple task of filling job vacancies Marcos said, but hiring officers and personnel with specialized skills that require experience and training to properly address OFW concerns. There has been no targeted effort to train specialized personnel for the said new department - migration being a multi-disciplinary and complex field.

“How do we instantly conjure experienced international negotiators to represent the Philippines at the International Labor Organization (ILO) or pull out psychosocially adept diplomats out of a hat? I worry that DOFil may simply result in an unseemly pirating of staff from POEA, OWWA, and other offices under Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE),” Marcos added.

Marcos also cited that overlapping functions of government agencies made OFWs feel they were being given the runaround and made it more difficult for them to seek redress for labor abuses. There is a need for a detailed delineation of tasks and functions of the new department vis-a-vis the DFA and DOLE.

Overlapping of functions in many offices have not been resolved and confusion such that the new department may merely worsen an already miserable conviction rate at the Department of Justice (DOJ) of illegal recruiters and human traffickers, Marcos noted.

She added that maintaining the POEA as an independent agency and excluding it from the organic set-up of the DOFil will be “fatal to any effort to assist our OFW victims. (Photos: Google Files)