|
MIGRANTE, the militant migrant workers alliance, pressed the Arroyo
government to provide overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their
families’ immediate economic relief from the food and oil crisis
in the country, the global economic slowdown and the plunging power
of the dollar.
The government should move to make OFW
remittance services free of charge, said Migrante.
Earlier, an International Monetary Fund study
said service charges deducted by banks range from $15 to $26, on top
of other charges lost to fluctuations in different currency exchange
rates and other schemes.
Regalado said the money charged by banks can
already buy a family half- sack of rice and other basic necessities.
Migrante is also asking for the scrapping of the
“OFW remittance tax” or documentary stamp tax that the
government collects for every OFW remittance transaction.
“OFWs are still taxed to death by this
government,” decried Connie Bragas-Regalado, Migrante
international chair. Regalado noted that the Tax Reform Act of 1997
or RA 8424 (Section 181) imposes a documentary stamp tax of 30
centavos (.15 percent) for each P200 remittance.
Migrante has estimated that the government rakes
in more than P2 million daily or P730 million each year in remittance
taxes alone, even while distressed OFWs do not readily receive
services like repatriation, medical or legal assistance.
Regalado also bared that there are more than
2,000 OFWs awaiting repatriation in the entire Middle East. In
Kuwait alone, seven OFWs were reportedly arrested for allegedly
leading a migrant workers’ strike at the Al Jassim Trucking
Company.
OFWs Joel Buenaventura, Jonathan Abad, Mario
Mesinas, Jolito Bawaan, Jose Bugnot, Edmund Baralla and Eduardo
Perez were arrested on April 18. They were among more than 200
migrant workers who allegedly went on strike because they were
poorly paid, aside from being forced to drive inside war-torn Iraq
from Kuwait.
|
