Migrant Focus Magazine: Issue #2

Migrant's Focus Magazine: Issue #2

Feature #1

A Feast in Government Fees

If the Philippine government were a cook, it would have been a grand chef of exotic migrant's fee dishes. Since the start of the systematic labor export program, it has successfully "cooked" up various extortionist schemes for overseas Filipinos. From the start of processing the documents of the OFWs in the Philippines up to working abroad, the government has prepared an alphabet soup and numbers steak with the sole aim of generating income from the forced export of Filipinos to save the perpetually ailing Philippine economy.

As the Yuletide season approaches, the Philippine government is surely having a "noche buena" feast with the income it squeezes out of the laboring migrants.

Pre-Departure Appetizers

Nobody can deny the harrowing process experienced by migrant workers before they can work abroad. To paraphrase a popular Filipino song: "Mag-abroad ay di-biro, maghapong nakatayo". Indeed, it's no joke to queue in a mile-long line. It's no joke to stand for hours under the heat of the sun. It's no joke to run around various government offices trying to get the different documents that one needs. And it's no joke when one is confronted with the astounding fees that government agencies charge. Every paper has a tag and every signature has a price.
Consider the shopping list of expenses (in pesos) a "newly-hired" migrant has to shell out before he/she even boards the airplane:

1. NBI Clearance P 55
2. Passport P650
3. Placement fee (part of which goes
> to POEA and OWWA)
POEA Processing fee USD 100
> OWWA Welfare fund contribution USD 25
OWWA Medicare P900
4. PDOS P50 - 150
5. Birth Certificate P 150
6. POEA OEC P100

These figures do not include the whole placement fee which usually amounts to P 15,000 to P 65,000.

Fees of Filipinos going to Hong Kong are as follows (in pesos, unless stated otherwise):

Agency Registration fee 100 - 500
Placement fee 30,000 - 65,000
Passport 850
Video 750
Medical 1,100 - 1,800
NBI Clearance 55 - 200
POEA Administrative fee US$100
OWWA Contribution US$25
PDOS 200
Mandatory Medicare 900
POEA OEC 100

For the ordinary Juans and Juanas, the total amount needed to work abroad is no small matter. Despite this, the need to work in "greener pastures" is still strong because of the non-existent chance to even live a decent life in the Philippines. Thus, many Filipinos do everything (including borrowing from friends, relatives and loan sharks) to pay the fees.

But the Philippine government exaction doesn't stop once the migrants reach their countries of destination. On the contrary, the government, through its extensions in the receiving countries, intensifies its extortionist design for migrants. A grand welcome. A hotpot of fees.

Sizzling OWWA Resolution 99-016

Last December 1999, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration dished out the OWWA Resolution 99-016 to supposedly improve the services that the OWWA is giving to migrant workers. The said resolution stipulated the collection of an annual OWWA "voluntary" membership fee of US$25. The planned program will give an income of US$100M (or P5B) to the OWWA coffers. This figure does not even include the 300,000 sea-based workers who are also mandated to pay the OWWA fee. In Hong Kong alone, OWWA will earn US$3.65M (P153.3M) from the 146,000 Filipino migrant workers (HK Immigration data, March 2000) here. What makes the resolution more absurd is that Filipino migrants already pay US$25 even while still in the Philippines because one's papers will not be processed if one doesn't pay this "voluntary" fee.

This plan of the OWWA, which shall remove the lifetime validity of OWWA membership, is already an old trick. In 1996, the OWWA tried to implement the Memorandum of Instruction (MOI) No. 8 which aimed to collect the OWWA fee per contract. Here in Hong Kong, migrant organizations readily opposed the implementation of the MOI#8 which forced the Philippine Consulate to withdraw the collection (though it has been implemented in other countries. Still, cases has been reported that the Consulate slyly implements MOI#8 by demanding the OWWA stamp which proves that one is a member of the OWWA whenever one applies for an Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC).

The government has planned to serve this new menu to migrant workers last July. The vigilance of migrant workers and migrant organizations in the Philippines and abroad has forced the government to shelve the plan in order to give way to so-called consultations. Currently, the OWWA resolution is steaming inside the OWWA ovens - waiting for its chance to be finally served by January 2001.

Baked Executive Order 197

While the OWWA Resolution steams, the government has prepared a new round of fees not only for migrant workers but also for Filipinos in general. Signed last January 13 by the master chef himself, Joseph Estrada, the Executive Order 197 (EO 197), is a new taxation scheme which shall surely generate more money for the government. EO 197 directed all government offices to increase by a minimum of 20% all charges for government services.

Since in every step of the way, migrant Filipinos pass through the various government agencies, EO 197 would mean astonishing hikes to the already overpriced processing procedure. As expected, the Philippine Consulate in Hong Kong immediately scrambled to implement the order with the increase in notarial and authentication fee. In 1998, migrant Filipinos in Hong Kong through the Coalition Against Government Exaction (CAGE) successfully campaigned for the lowering of authentication fee from HK$425 to HK$170. Now, following EO 197, the Philippine Consulate increased the authentication fee to HK$212.50. If one will add the redundant HK$85 "verification fee" the government will earn HK$178,500 per day! (based on the usual 600 contracts daily processing). The same is true for notarials which they have also increased from HK$170 to HK$212.50.

BIR Memorandum Side Salad

While the main course gives the government humongous income, it still cannot resist earning more from deceitful money-making schemes like the memorandum issued by the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) in the middle of this year. The BIR memorandum ordered the migrant workers to apply for tax exemption despite the fact that migrants are already tax-exempted. This new dish might look harmless enough to look at. But closer examination reveals its poisonous provision of penalizing a migrant worker to up to P1000 (HK$200) for failing to apply for exemption. It is absurd for the government to demand the declaration of a migrant's assets in the Philippines since it would've already been filed by our family members back home. This useless memorandum only adds more work to the lowly-paid rank and file public employees. Moreover, the migrants will only pay the added operational cost that it would generate.

Overpriced Passport Toppings

To finish off such a sumptuous meal, the Philippine government offers the most expensive dessert - passports that are almost five times more costly than the price back home.

Passports are necessary for every migrant worker. The price of the passports of the Philippines ranges from P500 - P750. However, as if their passports here are made of better quality materials, the Philippine Consulate charges HK$510 to HK$595 (P2,500 to P3,000) - a difference of P2,000 to P2,500! Consulate officials have repeatedly tried to justify such a ridiculous price difference by explaining that the proceeds from the passports are used in paying for the monthly office rent of the Consulate and for employees' salary. This pathetic reasoning can never rationalize the overpricing. Philippine offices abroad are allotted a yearly budget for its operations which already include monthly rent and wages of their employees. By this overpricing, the Consulate will earn HK$49.14M or P245.7M from Filipinos in Hong Kong (140,000 OFWs as of December 1998) if every Filipino will renew their passports after every five years.

A feast for the government, a pest for migrants

Government exaction has always been one of the main sources of revenue aside from the remittances that migrants send. Migrants are not only treated as commodities for sale but are also milked dry down to the last drop of their hard-earned money. Indeed, we are not "modern heroes" but modern money-making machines of the government. Financing of services, majority are non-existent or at best are mediocre, which should be the responsibility of the government for Filipinos abroad are transferred to migrants.

As one of its thriving income-generating schemes, the government uses all the tricks in its bagful of deceptive policies to extort money from migrants. Unless we act now, the Philippine government will continue to concoct dubious "recipes" which are in no way aimed at feeding the grumbling stomachs of the migrants and our families back home. Instead, it will continue to bleed us dry.

Migrants Filipinos have had enough. Government exactions must stop. This is our thrust and this is our fight.

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