MANILA, Philippines – Sen. Loren Legarda yesterday urged the government to help displaced overseas Filipino workers find employment or alternative sources of livelihood.
In a speech delivered at the Pamilyang OFW-MSME Summer Expo in Pasay City, she also urged returning OFWs to use their savings to start small businesses.
“Today, thousands of our migrant workers had been displaced due to the political unrest in some countries in the Middle East and North Africa. While their safety is our main concern in bringing them back to our country, the government has an obligation to help them find jobs or support livelihood programs for their reintegration,” she said.
Legarda also urged OFWs to take advantage of the Magna Carta for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) which requires lending institutions to allocate at least eight percent of their total loan portfolio to small businesses.
“OFWs must take advantage of this law, in the same way, the government must continue to urge our overseas Filipinos to engage into MSMEs because it not only allows OFWs to make good investment out of their income, but also provides more employment opportunities for other Filipinos,” she said.
Citing data from the Department of Trade and Industry, Legarda noted that ending 2009, there are 780,437 business enterprises operating in the country, 99.6 percent or 777,357 of these are MSMEs.
MSMEs accounted for the generation of 3,595,641 jobs, while large enterprises provided for 2,094,298 jobs.
Meanwhile, Sen. Manuel Villar Jr. has personally checked on the plight of OFWs in Dubai, particularly those who have experienced abuse by their employers.
Villar, who travelled to UAE early this week, will be holding dialogues with OFW groups in Dubai and will visit the Filipino Workers Resource Center (FWRC) in Dubai where distressed and run-away migrant workers are given shelter and assistance.
“It is important for me to personally talk to our Filipinos overseas and see how they are doing there. There are hundreds of thousands of OFWs who need assistance, especially those who are undocumented and are looking for the sympathy and help of our government,” Villar said.
Villar said the Dubai consultation is just one of the many dialogues he plans to undertake in many parts of the Middle East as he monitors the situation in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and even the simmering unrest in Syria.
“Even if we want to go to these places and help our countrymen, it’s really hard. We don’t want to get in the way of our government’s efforts to extricate our OFWs there,” he said.
source : Philstar Feed
