Blacklisting of 41 states ‘baseless’

The labor department has deferred for three months the barring of Filipinos from working in 41 countries. But it has not dropped the idea of blacklisting the 41 work destinations. That is, unless something drastic happens during the 90-day reprieve.

The worker deployment ban is to enforce the new Republic Act 10022 that strengthens the 1995 Magna Carta for Migrant Workers. Overseas placement agencies and workers’ advocates are opposing it for being arbitrary. For one, the Blas F. Ople Policy Center doubts the meticulousness of the labor department’s evaluation of the 41 countries. Wary of diplomatic implications, Foreign Sec. Albert del Rosario had asked Labor Sec. Rosalinda Baldoz for the three-month grace period. Within that time he would have reviewed the 41 countries’ labor policies. Susan Ople of the Policy Center would have ascertained if Filipinos already are working there.

The issue seems to be with the interpretation of the law. Section 3 of R.A. 10022 amends Section 4 of the Magna Carta to read as follows:

“Sec. 4. Deployment of Migrant Workers. — The State shall allow the deployment of overseas Filipino workers only in countries where the rights of Filipino migrant workers are protected. The government recognizes any of the following as a guarantee on the part of the receiving country for the protection of the rights of overseas Filipino workers:

“(a) It has existing labor and social laws protecting the rights of workers, including migrant workers;

“(b) It is a signatory to and/or a ratifier of multilateral conventions, declarations or resolutions relating to the protection of workers, including migrant workers; and

“(c) It has concluded a bilateral agreement or arrangement with the government on the protection of rights of overseas Filipino workers.”

Supposedly the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, which Baldoz chairs, opines that all three conditions must be met for a country to be compliant. That is tough. Even then, the POEA deems 125 countries to have made the grade.

How about countries that pass only one or two criteria? A case in point is East Timor. That Philippine regional ally in the ten-member ASEAN has been listed among the 41 non-compliant states. So Gerald Mosquera takes time out from his work at the Presidential Commission on Good Government to protest.

Mosquera had led the US-AID Anti-Corruption Project when East Timor, newly independent from Indonesia, was forming a government in 2002. He also advised the UN Mission of Support. So he knows that the country has a Labor Code, passed in 2010. Four years earlier it signed the International Convention on the Protection of Rights of All Migrant Workers and Their Families. Further, it has ratified five UN human rights pacts: upholding political, economic and cultural rights; for children; against racial and gender discrimination; and against cruel and inhuman treatment. Clearly the POEA board goofed in East Timor’s case. Mosquera suspects the factual bases for blacklisting the 40 other states.

In interpreting labor laws, lawyers say, the interest of workers must be the foremost consideration. POEA officials can invoke this as the reason for their strictness in enforcing R.A. 10022 and blacklisting the 41 countries. But NGOs ask if the POEA has weighed the ban’s effect on Filipino workers already there. Will the annoyed governments kick them out, or bar them from leaving? Will they still accept Filipinos if, in the future, the POEA rates them as compliant? More basic, does the POEA have a directory of Filipino workers in the 41 states? –Jarius Bondoc (The Philippine Star)