Overseas Filipino workers will surely look forward to the changes and improvements coming their way.
President Rodrigo Duterte’s top order for the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) is to ensure that government assistance is available to them from recruitment to deployment.
At a forum on Monday, Foreign Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay Jr. said first in the “marching orders” he received from Duterte is to “make sure” that the needs of OFWs are “specially and adequately addressed.”
The President ordered DFA, told Yasay, to make sure that from the first day of the recruitment process up to the time the OFWs arrive at their port of destination the government will be ready and available to help them in their needs.
Yasay said that as all of us know that our OFWs are “subject to a lot of difficulties, uncertainties, and vulnerabilities”, the least thing that the government can do is to make their services readily available for them.
Yasay said the process “will be cut to the minimum in terms of red tape.”
“Our President has said that he will not tolerate any lines or any queueing of the public, particularly also with our overseas Filipino workers,” he said. “Insofar as the DFA is concerned, we will cut short the process that is necessary in the grant of these passports or travel documents.”
The President first announced at a press briefing at the Matina Enclaves in Matina, Davao City on May 16 that he will be creating a new Department that will focus on the needs of the OFWs which will be named “Department of OFWs”
“I will create a Department of Overseas Filipino Workers and I’m thinking of converting the Post Office building in Manila into something very functional, useful to the Filipinos just like housing the Department of OFW,” he said as reported on Sun Star Davao.
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