Thanks largely to the Overseas Filipino Workers the Philippines is one of the most solid economies in today’s world of recession-hit rich countries. There are 10 to 11 million adult

Filipinos working as OFWs—some as immigrants, others as temporary workers and some as TNTs.

The Philippines is the world’s 12th most populous country—out of 204 countries. The proponents of the RH Bill are unhappy about that. They don’t realize or have forgotten than it is thanks to our having a large population that 11 million Filipinos are earning money abroad and sustaining the Philippine economy to the point of making it resilient and even a dynamic one.

Being No. 12 in population, our country is then the 12th largest consumer market in the world.
Thanks to our OFWs, the per capita income of the Philippines is $3,157, a respectable figure.

Impressive Gross Domestic Product
Thanks to the OFWs we are the 34th richest country in the world in terms of having a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $315 billion. This makes us richer than Malaysia whose GDP is only $278.6 billion, Hong Kong with $243.66 billion and even Singapore with $239.7 billion.

OFWs remit $23 trillion a year back home to us. This amount of money is 400 percent more than the $5 billion net foreign investments that entered the Philippines last year. It looks like it will be something like that again or even more in 2012. The World Bank sees remittances as something that will continue to grow worlwide—and the Philippines will be a major beneficiary.

Because of the OFWs’ remittances our country’s net international reserves is $82 billion. We are much better off than a lot of countries—including members of the G20.

Of course, the OFWs’ massive remittances have not solved the poverty problem. But that is not their fault. It is the fault of government policy if wealth has not filtered down to the grassroots—to the poor. Government policy has neglected agriculture and industrialization, which must be made robust because that is where solid jobs can be created while making our country really develop and grow in productivity and human capital development.

If we have 11 million OFWs, each one of them a hero, it is thanks to Blas F. Ople. He invented and developed the overseas employment program.

For all its gigantic contributions to the Philippine economy, the OEP has its downsides. For one, it exacts high social costs for many migrant workers and their families.

The program’s drawbacks however are far outweighed by the numerous benefits it has given the country—in particular, the millions of jobs their remittances create by making their families purchasers of products in malls and sari-sari stores, their children regular students in schools, and as mentioned the boost their remittances have been giving to the national economy. OFW money has created a strong Filipino middle class.

Ninth death anniversary
Today is the 9th death anniversary of Blas F. Ople.

The overseas employment program is the product of the great vision of a man who was one of out country’s greatest thinkers, who had served as labor secretary, senator and Senate president, co-author of the Philippine Constitution writer and foreign secretary.

This morning, members of his family, close friends and former associates and admirers will attend a Mass to honor his memory at the Libingan ng mga Bayani in Taguig City.

When once interviewed by a reporter on what he thought was his lasting legacy to his country, Ople replied quickly—his overseas employment program and the Labor Code of the Philippines.

Ople crafted the jobs program in 1974 as a stop-gap measure to arrest rising unemployment.
President Ferdinand Marcos balked at the idea, but eventually yielded when Ople warned about the growing unrest of the jobless and the underemployed and the great need for scarce foreign exchange to speed up growth and to address the growing oil crisis.

Ople immediately went to work, first launching the passage of a Labor Code that embodied strong provisions on the protection of workers’ rights and welfare during martial law with due regard for interests of employers.

Ople’s successors
Next he proceeded to set up the administrative infrastructure of the program, creating inter-related agencies to implement its objectives. He created the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration as the program’ s regulatory agency, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration as its social and welfare arm, and the Labor Attache Corps, which was to become the core of the Philippine Overseas Labor Offices, to attend to workers’ problems overseas.

He also created the National Manpower and Youth Council, now TESDA, as the program’s training agency.

These agencies have remained intact to this day, working in close coordination with one another to serve the interests and well-being of our overseas workers.

Since leaving the labor department in 1986, Secretary Ople has been succeeded by a stream of deserving men and women who, at one time or another, had sat at his feet.

With the exception of the late Augusto Sanchez, Franklin Drilon, now senator, and former Supreme Court associate justice Leonardo Quisumbing, the labor department has been run by Ople’s proteges in succession—Ruben Torres, Nieves Confesor, Chito Brillantes, Cris Trajano, Benny Laguesma, Pat Sto. Tomas, Arturo Brion, now SC associate justice, Marianito Roque, and now Rosalinda Baldoz.

The labor department has undergone numerous reforms and changes, but its administrators have always hewed closely to Ople’s grand vision in carrying out the agency’s mandate for labor creation and protection and maintaining industrial peace.

The overseas employment program remains an important and necessary government program to serve the jobless and our overseas workers until, like South Korea, the Philippines will have industrialized to require the recall most of our professionals, technicians and skilled workers, to man our factories, industries, farms, plants, offices and other workplaces, until every Filipino enjoys the honest option of working in his native country receiving decent, competitive and comfortable wages.