OWWA: Hotel budget for returning Pinoys depleted

by Mayen Jaymalin (The Philippine Star), 11 Mar 2021

MANILA, Philippines — The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) is seeking an additional P9.8 billion for the hotel accommodation and other needs of returning overseas Filipinos (ROFs) placed under mandatory isolation.

OWWA chief Hans Cacdac said the P6.2-billion budget provided by Congress for 2021 could be depleted by April due to the huge cost of maintaining hotel quarantine facilities for returning Filipinos.

“The maximum cost per night at a hotel is around P3,000 or it could be less, depending on the class of hotel. Then we have around 10,000 ROFs right now, so yes, OWWA is spending P30 million a day,” Cacdac disclosed at a virtual briefing yesterday.

Cacdac said the P30-million daily expenditures exclude the cost of free swab testing, food and transporting the ROFs to their home provinces.

As of yesterday, Cacdac said the OWWA already transported about 470,000 OFWs to the provinces since the start of the pandemic last year.

Since January, Cacdac said OWWA had to spend more for the hotel accommodation because the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) opted to adopt a new protocol requiring returning OFWs to undergo swab testing on their fifth or sixth day from arrival.

“The new protocol was the result of the emergence of the new variant. It’s a precautionary measure,” he said.

But it also means returning OFWs must stay longer in the quarantine hotels, unlike before when they could go home after testing negative upon arrival.

The OWWA already resorted to budget hotels because of the aoverwhelmingo cost of maintaining 140 quarantine hotels, Cacdac said.

The cost is really a challenge. By April 2021 the allocation will have run out, so Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello already wrote the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to sound off the need for a supplemental budget,T Cacdac said.

Still, he expressed optimism that the DBM would grant their request for a supplementary budget.

“We have received positive signals from the DBM. So it is really a matter of when and how much,” he said.

Cacdac clarified that the requested supplementary budget depends on the vaccination of program in other countries.

Between 80,000 to 100,000 OFWs are expected to return home this year, but the number may decline as a result of the vaccination program in host countries.

Also, Cacdac clarified that OWWA is not spending the agency’s trust fund for the accommodation and other expenses of ROFs.

The OWWA has suffered a 60 percent decline in membership contributions as a result of the pandemic last year.