THE OFW (overseas Filipino worker) sector is truly grateful to your administration for your love and dedication as well as your political will in realizing all the expanded programs for the OFWs and new formulated programs both from the legislative and executive department in advancing the promotion and protection of the welfare of our OFWs.
There are no words that can express our gratitude, Mr. President, for what you have achieved for our sector except that your legacy will forever be etched in our collective memory and in the annals of Philippine history.
Notwithstanding, the creation of the new Department of Migrant Workers and the subsequent appointment of a Secretary for this new agency, progress and implementation has been disappointingly slow to effect the reform that you and our sector has sought over decades of advocacy. With the remainder of your tenure we implore you to exert all in your power, using your executive imperative and emphatic initiative to make the Department of Migrant Workers immediately operational.
We believe there is no requisite, implied or directed, to further delay over the next two years the mandatory completion of the transition period in order to commence the turnover of the affected offices. The provisions of the law are sufficient to start the turnover of the offices, post haste, while current staffing can remain in holdover capacity, utilizing current budgets, while the staffing patterns and the 2023 budget is still to be made.
Since the start of the advocacy to create an OFW department, to the actual crafting of the law and impending implementation, individuals vested with self-interest continue to obfuscate, create obstacles bordering on the absurd or otherwise exert every influence and effort to derail its smooth and immediate implementation. These delays benefit not the OFWs but those who have impeded the progress you have sought to achieve. The OFWs want change as soon as possible; we want this new Department of Migrant Workers, with all its imperfections, be implemented and institutionalized.
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Therefore, Mr. President, we call upon you to kindly intercede and order all the affected offices to fully cooperate and start the turnover of their offices to the Department of Migrant Workers the soonest possible time.
OFW Global Coalition for Development
OFW Council of Leaders
Filipino Migrant Workers Group
Alliance of OFW
FILIPINAS
ECOFWI/OFW-CP
OFW Congress