An OFW’s tragic journey

ON DISTANT SHORE
Val. C. Abelgas

Except for his closest friends and relatives, no one will ever know for sure why Marlon Cueva, a 36-year-old power plant technician returning after a three-month deployment in Dubai, hanged himself in the lavatory of Gulf Air Flight GF 154 last week, just an hour away from being reunited with his wife and children.

Neither shall we know why he had to go back home just three months after his deployment as a power plant technician, which surely must have paid a handsome income. We won’t speculate on what transpired between his deployment on July 5 and his return flight and death on Oct. 21, but we can surmise that whatever it was, it placed a very heavy burden that his heart and mind could no longer carry.

The tragic journey of Marlon Cueva was symptomatic of what ails the Philippines’ practice of sending Filipino workers overseas. The tragedy that ended his brief stint as an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) was certainly not the first, nor would it be the last to befall OFWs. There had been many more tragic incidents involving OFWs, some publicized and some not even meriting a single line in Philippine newspapers nor in government reports, but none could be worse than the fate of Marlon Cueva.

Why did he decide to end it all when in just one hour, he would be back in the loving arms of his family and friends?

“His so far is the saddest of all the OFWs’ struggles of life and death, aside from those who have been victims of abuses,” John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator, said in a statement.

Monterona said Cueva’s case is another face of a struggling OFW, “like many others whose pure intent is to work to give a decent living for their children.”

He noted that Cueva’s suicide followed an earlier incident where another returning OFW, Alma Estrellas, gave birth and threw the baby in the trash bin of the lavatory of the same Gulf Air Flight GF 154 and on the same aircraft last Sept. 12. The baby survived and latest reports said Estrellas, who said she was raped by her Dubai employer, would soon be given custody of the child.

“These two cases, aside from the 7 to 10 cases of abuses, maltreatment, and labor malpractices we have been receiving daily in the Middle East, which we have been consistently reporting to concerned government agencies and to the public, are serious concerns that need special attention,” Monterona said.

In 2008, the Commission on Filipinos Overseas estimated that some 9 million Filipinos, or about 10 percent of the Philippine population, work overseas as temporary workers at any given time.

That year alone, 1.3 million Filipinos were deployed overseas as domestic workers, medical professionals, construction workers, maritime workers, and IT experts, among others, according to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. They were sent to countries across the world, including those in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, Australia and North America. An average of one million Filipinos leave every year for jobs abroad.

In 2008, US$16.4 billion was sent to the Philippines as remittances, making up 11.4% of the country’s GDP, according to data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas and the National Statistics Office. In 2009, $17 billion were remitted, and as of end of August this year, some $12 billion have already been remitted by overseas Filipinos and is expected to top the $19 billion mark by the end of the year.

Government records reveal that most of the money remitted by these workers are spent by their families for food, home improvement and the children’s education, with nothing left as savings. As a result, OFWs are “trapped” overseas as their families become completely dependent on these monthly remittances.

It is not uncommon for a Filipino family to have a father, mother or a child who have been working abroad for more than 20 years. Many of them tried staying in the Philippines for good, only to discover once again that their income there would never be enough, and so had to go back to Saudi Arabia or some Middle East country to work again.

Because the Philippine government, like the OFWs’ families, has become dependent on the remittances of these workers, it tends to overlook the fact that both the Filipino worker abroad and their families in the homeland are suffering from this labor phenomenon.
Tens of thousands of Filipino workers, especially those deployed as domestic helpers and factory workers are exploited, and physically and sexually abused. Those that are not abused or exploited have to overcome loneliness and other problems brought about by their prolonged separation from their families.

Similarly, the spouse and children left behind are also saddled with emotional and psychological issues spawned by the long separation. It is not uncommon in the Philippines to see children growing up without their father or mother, or sometimes both.

The overseas Filipino workers program was initiated by then Labor Secretary Blas F. Ople in the 1970s as a temporary remedy to the unemployment problem. Most countries transitioning from an agricultural-based economy to an industrialized one had to deploy workers abroad at one time or another. Taiwan and South Korea, for example, used to be two of the biggest exporters of labor. But with industrialization, their citizens now stay at home and travel only as tourists or businessmen.

But while China and India, the two biggest labor exporters, are slowly transitioning to becoming two of the strongest economies in the world, the Philippines, which is the third biggest labor exporter, remains poor and unable to provide jobs to its population.

Unlad Kabayan, a non-profit based in the Philippines, said “There is a definite cycle of migration: Filipino workers go abroad, earn a little, return to the Philippines, use up the savings, and then work abroad again. The challenge is to break this cycle, and provide an alternative to migration.”

Indeed, the government has to start refocusing its priorities to stop this “culture of migration” and keep its workers home, so that they don’t have to suffer the indignities of working for foreigners and their children don’t have to grow up without their parents.
But lulled into complacency by the sweet scent of the dollar, our leaders would rather keep the status quo, never mind what ills it would bring in the future.

During his campaign for the presidency, candidate Noynoy Aquino said of his vision on the issue of the OFWs: “From a government that treats its people as an export commodity and a means to earn foreign currency to a government that creates jobs at home so that working abroad will be a choice rather than a necessity; and when its citizens do choose to become OFWs, their welfare and protection will still be the government’s priority.”

We’ll hold President Aquino to that promise.(valabelgas@aol.com)