THE HOLISTIC VIEW OF THE NEW POEA MC-04 POLICY

Excerpt from the Critique paper prepared by Mission for Migrant Workers (MFMW) and Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) fully supported by Filipino EPS Workers Association (FEWA) - South Korea

On December 18, 2007, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) issued a Memorandum Circular No. 04, Series of 2007 (hereinafter referred to as MC-04), entitled Guidelines on the Direct Hiring of Filipino Workers. The order took effect last January 15, 2008.

In a news release of the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE), the agency directing the POEA, dated January 19, 2008, they said that MC-04 “allows direct hiring of OFWs by foreign employers only upon approval by the Secretary of Labor and subject to screening of employers and employment contract verification by the Labor Attaché or the Philippine Embassy.”

Additionally, it clarified that “direct hiring may be allowed only for members of the diplomatic corps and of international organizations, government officials of ministerial level, and employers who are hiring on one-time or trial basis. The number of employees to be hired directly shall not exceed 5.”

According to DoLE, “under the pre-qualification guidelines, employers must comply with stricter documentation and processing requirements which include the posting of repatriation bond in the amount of US$5000 per employee to guarantee the repatriation of the worker or of his remains, in the event of death, and performance bond of US$3000 per employee or equivalent to the worker’s three months salary to guarantee compliance of the employers with the provision of the employment contract. The bonds should be secured from local bonding companies. They will also provide the employees with health and medical insurance.”

“And if employers do not want to comply with the bonding and insurance requirements or with the standard employment contract, they will not be allowed to hire OFWs directly. But they may hire thru licensed placement agencies which are willing to assume responsibilities over the employees, including payment of salaries and other employment benefits.”

Furthermore, DoLE Secretary and POEA Board Chairman Artutro Brion declared that the new policy for direct hires is aimed at “strengthening the protection mechanisms for OFWs.”

In the experience of Filipino migrant workers, when the government starts to drum up slogans of “protection”, it is time to be alert, vigilant and inquisitive.

Thus, the Mission for Migrant Workers (MFMW) and Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) did not waste their time to conduct a thorough study and analyses about the impact of MC-04 to Filipino migrant workers. The results of their study and analyses were strongly agreed and supported by Filipino EPS Workers Association (FEWA) in response to its objective which is the welfare of all Filipino migrant workers not only in South Korea but around the world.

1. MC-04 will result to loss of jobs and employment opportunities.

The new guidelines provide for pre-qualification of employers wishing to direct hire a Filipino worker. It carries no distinction among the Filipino workers being hired that include current OFWs who are renewing their contracts and those with finished contracts or pre-terminated contracts and are transferring employers.

The imposition of the expensive bond payments may push foreign employers to recruit workers from other countries that do not impose bond payments instead of recruiting Filipino jobseekers in the Philippines.

This means that a prospective Korean employer directly hiring a Filipino professional worker (E7 Visa), for example, has to shell out about US$9,050 or approximately 4,050,000 KRW as bonds (US$4,050 for the three-month salary performance bond and US$5,000 for the repatriation bond). For practical and financial reasons, no employer will be willing to put up this amount.

Thus, an OFW who just have to renew a contract with the same employer or has another employer already in line must still register with a recruitment agency in order for her papers to get processed. This will be a cause for massive confusion among the OFWs and the employers on top of the inconvenience that it will put in an otherwise simple process. What will happen to OFWs in Macau, for example, who are mostly directly hired? Or those in countries like Kuwait where a worker is allowed to directly seek an employer if the previous employer for at least two year permits him or her?

Even worse, this will lead to more unnecessary fees for OFWs for the recruitment agencies will surely charge them for a “service” that is not even needed in the first place.

With the additional hassle of passing through agencies, an employer who wants to direct hire a worker will be strongly discouraged to hire a Filipino. The potential loss of job opportunity is a greater tragedy for any OFW who could have been assured of an employer if not for the MC-04.

2. MC-04 puts Filipino workers under the control of recruitment agencies and makes them vulnerable to overcharging and other malpractices of unscrupulous recruitment agencies.
Since the new pre-qualification of employers for direct hires/ name hires is impossible to meet, all workers have to, by force majeure, go through recruitment agencies.

This will mean that recruitment agencies will have a field day with overcharging. The government has now completely given unscrupulous recruitment agencies the free rein to exploit for maximum financial benefit the desperation of Filipino migrants to work abroad.

In an initial survey of the MFMW among its clients, overcharging has remained rampant if not even worse than before. Out of the initial 526 respondents surveyed from the MFMW clients, about 80% paid more than P25,000 to agencies. Of this, about 25% paid P60,000 to P100,000 while 31 of the respondents said that they paid more than P100,000.

In Taiwan, Filipino workers are charged by as mush as P190,000. Even the Taiwan government has recognized the gravity of the problem of workers with recruitment agencies and, since the start of this year, has initiated moves to allow direct hiring for returning caregivers.

If a host government such as Taiwan acknowledges this problem, why is the Philippine still bent in shoving its own nationals to the mercy of recruiters? How can the government still claim that putting OFWs in the hands of recruitment agencies is for their protection?

Following the government’s logic, it appears that they consider direct hiring as the problem of OFWs and not overcharging. They cannot be more wrong. It is widely-acknowledged by migrant workers and institutions serving distressed migrants that those malpractices of unscrupulous recruitment agencies are the source of many serious problems of Filipino migrants. Overcharging of fees in particular has put Filipino migrants in a situation where they are unable to escape from the debt trap cycle. This condition has recently even worsened with the sliding value of OFW remittances that now cannot even meet the basic needs of their families in the Philippines.

Of the 743 cases handled by the MFMW last year, 492 indicated that their employment was facilitated by recruitment agencies. Ninety-six per cent (96%) of them experienced problems in their employment.

This just shows that incidence of abuse and rights violations are not tempered by the recruitment agencies’ facilitation of employment. If the government believes that processing of employment through recruitment agencies will decrease violations of rights to OFWs – or vice versa, direct hiring of OFW by employers themselves increases violations of OFW rights – then this government is really not in touch with what is happening to their nationals abroad. Hostaging of OFWs by recruitment agencies shall surely increase by leaps and bounds with the implementation of MC-04.

3. MC-04 belies the fact that recruitment agencies are not there to protect OFWs but are in fact accessories to, and even promoter of, many cases of abuse.

When did recruitment agencies ever become champions of OFW services and protection? Never!

Aside from being the source of OFW woes, recruitment agencies even aggravate the situation of abused migrant workers. There have been many cases wherein a worker whose rights have been violated is dispatched back to the Philippines by the recruitment agency instead of being provided with the needed assistance.

Distressed migrants are oftentimes left to fend for themselves. If they approach the PCG, they will be directed to the agencies. If they go to the agencies, either they are directed to the airport or asked to seek help from the government.

Migrants’ organizations and service institutions are the ones that take on the responsibility of providing assistance to distressed migrants. More often than not, it requires the determination of the distressed migrant worker and the support of migrants’ organizations and service institutions to push the government to provide the assistance that the worker needs.

Recent concrete cases of these are those of Jocelyn Dunluan in Canada, Marilou Ranario in Kuwait and of Miriam Espiritu – an OFW who died in Hong Kong and was only repatriated by the OWWA after the pressure exerted by her family and the MFMW.

In summary, MC-04 is a policy that shall put Filipino migrant workers in a worse situation than before.
As migrant workers have put it, it is a policy that throws them to the wolves and opens them up to more exploitation, abuse and hardship. It plays right into the government’s plan of “unburdening” itself of its responsibility to its nationals abroad without grave impacts to its own gains – in fact, it stands to gain more – from the migration of Filipinos.

As institutions providing services to migrant workers and advocating for their rights, IT IS TIME TO UNITE AND CALL our Philippine government to:

1. Immediately scrap POEA MC-04 Policy.
2. Institutionalize effective mechanisms that will curb, if not, finally stamp out, the overcharging and other malpractices of recruitment agencies.