POEA rejects deferment of mandatory insurance for OFWs

MANILA, Philippines—The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) Governing Board rejected a proposal of the recruitment agencies to defer the implementation of the mandatory insurance cover, it was learned Sunday.

According to the recruitment industry, its proposal for a deferment until the Insurance Commission decides on its urgent request to lower the tariff rate of $72 per year, or $144-$150 for a two-year contract, to a maximum of $72 for a two-year contract, has been turned down.

And recruitment leaders from FAME (Federated Associations of Manpower Exporters Inc.) and Pasei (Philippine Association of Service Exporters Inc.), the two largest umbrella organizations of recruitment agencies with a total of 1,200 members, warned that the deployment of overseas Filipino workers to other countries will thus continue to drop in the last two months of the year and well into 2011.

Jackson Gan, president of Pilmat (Pilipino Manpower Accredited to Taiwan), said foreign employers have cancelled hundreds of contracts for overseas Filipino workers in Taiwan and Hong Kong because of the new requirement.

He said Philippine-mandated insurance is useless in these places because factory workers and caregivers in Taiwan are already insured for $800,000 (or the equivalent of P1.2 million) while Filipino maids in Hong Kong have a comprehensive insurance with benefits reaching P 1.2 million, “very much superior to that of the insurance providers accredited by the IC.”

Earlier, POEA head Jennifer Manalili said there was a 52-percent drop in the processing of contracts of new hires since November 8 when the mandatory insurance coverage took effect.

She said the average daily contracts processed dropped from 1,270 to 607 during the first two weeks since the POEA required the submission of a certificate of cover for the issuance of an Overseas Employment Certificate (OEC), the document recognized by the Bureau of Immigration for departing contract workers.

While the POEA administrator said she supports the recruitment industry’s proposal for a lower tariff, she said Insurance Commission officer in charge Vida Chong would have to decide on it. –INQUIRER.net