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During last week’s wake for my son, Gil, some of his friends from
the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) came to pay
their last respects. In my talk with them, I asked how their boss,
POEA Administrator Rosalinda Baldoz, was faring.
Their response was that she was not in her usual
merry mood. They said she had displeased some influential people in
the course of her work and was worried she might lose her job. I
heard the same remark from some staffers of DOLE’s International
Labor Affairs Service (ILAS) in Intramuros where the POEA chief was
a recent visitor.
I get sad whenever I hear of good and deserving
officials being threatened with ouster after serving the public well
with honesty and efficiency. I am not close to the POEA
administrator but she has my deepest respect for her humility,
scruples and great devotion to her job.
When former Labor Secretary Arturo Brion was
named as associate justice of the Supreme Court, I mentioned Baldoz
in an early column as one of five senior labor officials, led by
then OWWA Administrator Marianito Roque (who has since been named
labor secretary), as a suitable replacement.
In her delicate job, Baldoz cannot escape
stepping on some delicate toes while implementing overseas
employment policies, some of which may not sit well with certain
groups of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
One policy which had stirred a full-blown
controversy was POEA’s Memorandum No. 4, involving the direct
hiring of OFWs. The memorandum requires an employer to post a
performance bond equivalent to the three-month salary of a hired
worker and a $5,000 guarantee to answer for his repatriation at the
expiration of his work contract.
The circular has been recalled but not without
provoking a call for Baldoz’s resignation. The critics charged the
POEA with making it “difficult and expensive” for potential
employers to hire Filipino workers. They claimed further that the
memorandum had reduced the competitiveness of OFWs in the labor
market.
The controversial memorandum was not Baldoz’s
initiative. It was approved by the POEA’s governing board and it
became her bounden duty to implement it. But in so doing, she had
exposed herself to severe criticism.
Baldoz also had been castigated by former
Supreme Court Chief Justice Artemio Panganiban over the “shabby
treatment” of his daughter at the Manila International Airport
while trying to catch a flight back to the US. She had been told by
POEA personnel to secure an overseas exit clearance (OEC) at the
POEA office on Ortigas before she could leave for her destination.
Panganiban had to seek Brion’s help to allow
his daughter to leave.
The question was raised over whether a Filipino
worker directly hired by a foreign employer had to secure an OEC.
But even if required, Panganiban asked if the government could not
waive it in a case where a worker urgently needed to catch a flight
going back to his or her job.
Baldoz did apologize for the alleged shabby
treatment, conceding that Panganiban’s daughter should have been
“accorded the proper respect.” To make amends, she promised that
henceforth, OFWs will be provided with identification cards in place
of the OECs to save them from the inconvenience of securing exit
clearances from Philippine embassies and consulates abroad or from
the POEA office if they are in the Philippines.
Under overseas employment regulations, Filipino
workers may be hired through duly-licensed recruitment agencies or
directly hired by foreign employers. All are required to go through
POEA processing to make sure their employment contracts are in
compliance with POEA labor standards.
Baldoz explains that POEA processing is intended
to protect all OFWs, whether hired directly or through placement
firms. This enables the government, she says, to monitor workers’
situations in their work sites, especially if they are in distress.
But there are professionals hired for high-end
positions abroad with high salaries commensurate with their
qualifications. These workers can on their own fully protect
themselves.
People who know Baldoz well say she never
performs her duties below her best. It will be unfair to ask for her
scalp when she is just doing her job according to the rules of her
office.
She has worked for more than eight years in her
present position without aggrandizing herself. She should be judged
by the people she could have displeased not in part but in whole. I
am sure that they.will see the light and come to know and understand
her better.
agr0324@yahoo.com
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