{"id":170747,"date":"2018-07-12T21:54:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-13T01:54:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=170747"},"modified":"2018-07-12T21:58:53","modified_gmt":"2018-07-13T01:58:53","slug":"prrd-year-2-govt-reassures-protection-support-for-ofws","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/07\/12\/prrd-year-2-govt-reassures-protection-support-for-ofws\/","title":{"rendered":"PRRD Year 2: Gov’t reassures protection, support for OFWs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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At the pre-State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2018 forum on Wednesday, Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Secretary Silvestre Bello said the government has done a lot to help OFWs since President Rodrigo Duterte took his oath of office in mid-2016. (Pixabay photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Officials of different clusters of the Duterte Cabinet have reassured the government\u2019s full support for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).<\/p>\n

At the pre-State of the Nation Address (SONA) 2018 forum on Wednesday, Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Secretary Silvestre Bello said the government has done a lot to help OFWs since President Rodrigo Duterte took his oath of office in mid-2016.<\/p>\n

Bello said the Duterte administration has established at least 17 One-Stop Shop Service Centers where OFWs can avail of government services.<\/p>\n

In his accomplishment report, Participatory Governance Cluster (PGC) co-chair Benjamin Diokno said 1.22 million OFWs have been assisted by One-Stop Shop Service Centers.<\/p>\n

Bello said the first-ever OFW Bank has also been created to respond to the financial needs of Filipino migrant workers and their families.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have also put up hotline 1349 where all request of the OFWs will have to be acted upon in 72 hours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Bello also mentioned the iDOLE OFW ID Card that can serve as Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC) of the OFWs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is free of charge for our OFWs. That\u2019s unprecedented because that\u2019s what the President wanted to give to our OFWs,\u201d the labor chief said.<\/p>\n

Recently, Bello said the Kuwaiti and Philippine governments, through Duterte\u2019s request, signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that provides protection to more than 250,000 OFWs in the Gulf state.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now the cellphones of our OFWs in Kuwait cannot be confiscated by their employers while they have now specific eight hours of works and enough sleeping hours and other benefits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He said at least 13,000 OFWs were stranded in Saudi Arabia when Duterte came into office but through the President\u2019s intervention, and with the help of Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, \u201cwe were able to bring them home.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThrough our integration programs, when they (OFWs) came home, they were given financial assistance and livelihood worth PHP20,000,\u201d Bello said.<\/p>\n

Department of Agriculture (DA) Secretary Manny Pi\u00f1ol also said his department and DOLE have put up a program, under which, OFWs could apply for loans to start business in food production.<\/p>\n

For the past two years, the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has been providing livelihood and entrepreneurship training courses and seminars for returning OFWs.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Leonor Briones informed the audience about the DOLE-initiated program called \u201cSa Pinas Maam at Sir Ka\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose principals and teachers working abroad, we encouraged them to come back and apply again because our salaries for teachers are now higher or equal to what they have been getting abroad,\u201d Briones said.<\/p>\n

Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Officer-in-Charge Prospero de Vera III, for his part, said the Philippine government has been coordinating with different education ministries abroad to provide mutual recognition degrees for OFWs.<\/p>\n

Recently, de Vera said Duterte has signed Republic Act No. 11035 or the Balik Scientists Law that seeks to provide incentives to Filipino scientists to entice them to return home and fill in the gaps in scientific and technological expertise in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have done a lot of programs and projects and we intend to do more for our OFWs in the coming years,\u201d Bello said.<\/p>\n

The forum, themed \u201cTatak ng Malasakit\u201d, is the second of the three-part pre-SONA 2018 Forum prepared by the Office of Cabinet Secretary and the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO).<\/p>\n

It aims to inform the public about key policies, programs and initiatives implemented by each Cabinet cluster during the second year of the Duterte administration.<\/p>\n

The third and last part of the forum, entitled \u201cTatak ng Katatagan\u201d, will be held on July 18, six days before Duterte\u2019s third SONA, which he said will be finished in not more than 35 minutes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA\u00a0\u2013 Officials of different clusters of the Duterte Cabinet have reassured the government\u2019s full support for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":170752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,95],"tags":[10842,52816],"class_list":["post-170747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","category-news-ph","tag-duterte-cabinet","tag-state-of-the-nation-address-sona","mauthors-jelly-musico","mauthors-philippine-news-agency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}