By Pepper Marcelo

I have been married for five years and have a three-year-old daughter. We are doing okay but dream of having our own home and traveling. My auntie in the Dubai has offered me help in getting a job there but I am worried about leaving my family behind. I have heard of other stories of how marriages have broken up because the long-distance.  What should I do?

- Farah of Sta. Rosa, Laguna, posted on www.ofwonline.com

For many of the estimated 10 million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), coping with life abroad is a stressful, sometimes terrifying experience. For those who have spouses and children left at home, severe homesickness could lead to mental stress and psychological illness. The family left behind can be negatively affected as well.

It is sad to note that while the government constantly harps on the contributions of the OFWs in propping up the national economy, it has miserably failed to provide adequate services to address the physical, emotional and psychological needs of OFWs and their families. What makes the situation doubly pathetic is that even the basic and simple need of OFWs to communicate with their families has been totally neglected by authorities. One would expect that the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, with the millions of pesos it collects from OFWs, would tap cheap technology such as the Internet to provide counseling and communication services to the workers and their families.

Thankfully, there are a few non-governmental organizations that attempt to alleviate the miserable situation of our migrant workers. One such private initiative addresses the need for a Help Line for OFWs and their families where they can seek counseling and expert advice.

“That’s where we come in. We tend to be the social support for OFWs who feel they cannot talk to friends or family,” says Dr. Regina Hechanova-Alampay, founder of OFW Online, a 24-hour free online service for overseas Filipino workers and their families.

An organizational psychologist who has done significant research relating to the psychology of the Filipino within a work environment, Alampay has trained employers, managers and workers on how to become more effective in their work. She is currently an associate professor at the Psychology department at the Ateneo de Manila University and the Executive Director of the Ateneo Center for Organization Research and Development (Ateneo CORD).

Based on her extensive experience, Alampay knows first-hand how difficult life is for the OFW, particularly the psychological toll of living abroad for extended period of time on both the worker and the family left behind.

The idea for OFW Online was born in 2007 while Alampay was attending a conference on Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT for D). “They were showcasing how technology was being used to address social problems. I was the only psychologist in that conference and it made me think, ‘Why can’t we harness technology to help OFWs’?”

She said that it took some time to obtain funding for the project. She credits the Singapore Internet Research Centre (funded by the International Development Research Center of Canada) for supporting the project.

OFW Online currently has 18 professional counselors who offer their services seven days a week from 9:00 am to 12:00 midnight. The counselors provide free consultation according to their specializations, such as marital issues, personal development, family matters, work issues and cultural adjustment.

The website has three primary features: Counseling which allows users to chat online with a counselor in a set amount of time, usually one hour (although follow-up sessions can be scheduled); Family Chat which allows OFWs to talk privately with family members; and Forums, where OFWs and their families can post messages.

To date, the website has had more than 25,000 visitors, with counseling exclusively done through chat or email. Asked whether not being able to personally interact with their client one-on-one has its drawbacks, Alampay admits that Internet communication has its advantages and disadvantages.

“On one hand, the anonymity is liberating for some users who would not ordinarily seek face to face counseling,” she says. “On the other hand, this kind of counseling is not appropriate for people with clinical disorders or suicidal tendencies.”

She says the most prevalent problems she and her colleagues are most often faced with are issues relational in nature, i.e., problems with marital relationships and parent-child relationships. “The separation from family is really tough on both the worker and those left behind. It is difficult to maintain intimacy and communications across the miles and that is often the source of difficulties,” she explains.

Alampay emphasizes that there are social costs to migration and a decision to work abroad needs to be thought out very carefully beyond monetary gain. “When possible, I would suggest trying to keep the family together to avoid the difficulties that arise from prolonged separation.”

If one needs more assistance than the internet can provide, she suggests that they seek out a professional counselor in their location. “Sometimes, this can be found in the churches (as in Hong Kong) or nonprofit organizations that may be able to refer them to someone who can help them.”

For her significant contributions to public service, Alampay was named one of 2010’s “The Outstanding Women in the Nation’s Service” (TOWNS). The award is presented by the TOWNS Foundation to outstanding Filipino women ages 21 to 45 years old who have contributed positively to strengthening national capability and in shaping the nation’s future and served as catalysts for economic, social, and cultural development by providing pro bono their time, talent and resources to government, business media, the arts, the academe, sports, and non-government organizations.

“I feel extremely grateful for the acknowledgment but at the same time humbled because the work isn’t just mine,” she says. “OFW Online was my idea and I got it started but there are many other people who are involved in this and it is in their behalf that I accepted the award.”

With 20 years experience as a human resources consultant in organizations both in the Philippines and in the US, Alampay has taught companies to be culturally relevant and globally competitive in an industrial and corporate setting. “Basically, our role is to ensure that workers are happy, well and productive,” she says. “At the same time, we also assist groups and organizations in becoming more effective, competitive and sustainable.”

In award-winning publications that she has written, such as The Way We Work: Research and Best Practices in Philippine Organizations, Leading Philippine Organizations in a Changing World and For the People, With the People: Developing Social Enterprises in the Philippines, she calls attention to the cultural difference between how work is viewed and treated by Filipinos and the rest of the world, particularly Western society.

For more information about OFW Online, check out its website at www. ofwonline.com.

By Pepper Marcelo

In September 2010, a Filipina domestic worker returning to Manila from Qatar left her newly born baby in the lavatory of a Gulf Air airplane. She later claimed that she had been raped by her employer, becoming pregnant as a result and, fearing shame from her family, decided to abandon the baby in the trash compartment of the airplane restroom. The baby, later named George Francis by caregivers, survived and has been reunited with his repentant mother.

The following month, another OW committed suicide inside the plane that was bringing him home. Marlon Cueva, 36, was found dead by flight attendants as Gulf Air Flight 154 was preparing to land in Manila from Abu Dhabi. The victim was observed to have been anxious through most of the flight and kept on telling other passengers that he was “sorry.”

Cueva left for the country in September last year to work as an electrician. But barely two months into his two-year contract he resigned, citing “personal reasons.”

These two incidents are the latest grim statistics on the human toll of overseas employment. Every day a sad, often tragic, tale unfolds in every nook and cranny of the world where some 10 million overseas Filipino workers toil under physically severe and emotionally draining conditions.

The Department of Foreign Affairs is currently monitoring some 100 active death penalty cases involving OFWs around the world. Of that number, 16 are for murder-homicide (including rape-robbery with murder), and 74 involve drug trafficking. Last December, President Benign Aquino III admitted that the government had boycotted the Nobel Prize awarding ceremonies in Oslo so as not to earn the ire of the Chinese government, which protested the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to a prominent Chinese pro-democracy activist. Saying the government’s move was “in the national interest,” the President cited the ongoing cases of five OFWs facing execution in China for drug related cases.

Material gain

To be sure, overseas employment has been good to millions of our countrymen and to the economy as well. Think of the mouths it has fed, the students it has sent to school, the houses it has built, the business it has spawned and all the material wealth it has generated.

Then factor in the invaluable boon to the local economy by the enormous remittances sent in by OFWs. The remittance volume last year was projected at $18.5 billion, up by eight per cent from the 2009 level of $17.35 billion. Economists say without these money inflows, the Philippine economy would have been in tatters a long time ago.

But at what price? As if separation from one’s family is not enough pain to bear, migrant workers have to endure untold suffering abroad – abusive employers, inhuman working conditions, meager pay, inhospitable surroundings, homesickness, lack of government support, no job security, discrimination. All this contribute to indescribable physical, emotional and psychological anguish which could push the workers and their families to mental stress, bodily illnesses, and even death. One can only recall the case of Flor Contemplacion, the Filipina domestic worker in Singapore who was executed for killing a fellow Filipina housekeeper and a Singaporean boy the latter was caring for. Citing Contempacion’s unstable mental condition at the time, her supporters pleaded for clemency but to no avail,

Social cost

“It’s difficult to characterize the social cost for OFWs,” says Maria Angela Villalba, CEO of Unlad Kabayan, a program of the Asian Migrant Center which provides services to migrant workers, including savings mobilization and alternative investments at home.

“The situation is this – you’re being uprooted and placed in a situation where the people and environment around you are hostile. You work like a beast of burden from the time you wake up to the time you sleep. You’re always at the mercy of your employer. It is so unbearable that many lose their minds.”

Villalba says the suffering of migrant workers is made worse by the absence of a safe and welcoming place of refuge in their place of destination. “Their coming home to the family after a long day of hard work is taken for granted. But if you do hard work, and you have no family to come home to, and you come home to a cold bed, in a small room, and then wake up the following day to do the same thing, you get yourself into that depressing situation,” she laments.

Given the government’s inability to provides protection and services to OFWs, non-government organizations (NGOs) and migrant workers groups like Unlad Kabayan heroically fill the gap by offering a myriad of services – from crisis intervention, paralegal assistance and counseling to setting up refuge centers and educational services on self-organization, human rights and financial literacy.

The number of OFW-related deaths is rising, notes Villalba, but whether they are due to work-related stress or depression remains untracked. “The government’s response is not all of them died through mysterious circumstances,” she says. “Many of them were supposedly sick, or had accidents, and generally when they’re abroad, there’s a chance or possibility they will die.”

Families left behind

Back home, many families left behind by OFWs are not faring in terms of their psychological and emotional well being. Countless accounts have been told about broken families caused by philandering spouses, either the one abroad or the other left behind.

“Marital relationships require nurturing and intimacy,” says Dr. Gina Hechanova-Alampay, psychologist and founder of the online counseling site OFWOnline. “This becomes difficult when the spouses are physically separated from each other. The OFW and his/her spouse need to find a way to establish such intimacy at least emotionally across the miles. Unless this is done, it is not surprising that they will turn to people who can fulfill their needs for companionship and intimacy.”

With regards to the children, many feel abandoned, and potentially grow up to be spoiled and undisciplined without proper parental guidance. Communications technology such as the internet and cell phones cannot fill the vacuum created by absentee parents.

“Parenting is not just about providing for the needs of children. It is also about being their emotionally and psychologically in order to raise children and teach them the right values,” says Hechanova-Alampay. “Having an OFW parent simply means that the burden of this may fall on the parent who is left behind unless the OFW can constantly communicate with their children to provide such support.”

Besides the separation anxiety that comes from longing for parental care, children of OFWs may also be confused about gender roles or develop a materialistic attitude. Sometimes, when the father is reluctant or unwilling to fill the parental void left by an absent mother, it is usually the eldest daughter who assumes the role of caregiver for the family.

Government’s role

The Philippine government is fully aware of the problems confronting OFWs and their families. But for all its avowed concern for the “Bagong Bayani,” it has not been able to provide the necessary services for workers abroad and their families at home. The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), the Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLO) and the Philippine embassies and consulates are grossly short of funds and staff.

Migrant groups have complained that government agencies are slow to respond, and even insensitive and apathetic to the plight of the migrant workers. “I’ve heard reports from workers about government officials admonishing them, ‘With the lack of jobs in the Philippines, you should be thankful to have a job in the first place,’” narrates Villalba. “It is not very encouraging, to say the least.”

Hechanova-Alampay adds that government political and legal officers and consulate staff are not trained to provide psychosocial support to migrant workers. “I think the government needs to recognize this need and find ways either by assigning people in the consulate who would have the capacity for such type of psychological service or to at the very least train staff on doing ‘first-aid counseling’.  The consulate staff could also be trained on spotting danger signs so they can refer OFWs to appropriate professionals.”

Given the government’s inadequate resources and services to cope with the myriad of pressing problems of our migrant workers and their families, our OFWs have only themselves, their kababayans and migrant organizations to fall back on. With very limited options, they can console themselves with the thought that perhaps conditions back home are not any better.

For workers experiencing hardship abroad, Villalba advises them to remain optimistic and to focus on their goals for the future.

“Save your money, and then build your dream or plan your future while you are still here in your destination country,” she says. “You will not be in that country forever; you have a family to come home to. Put your plan together early and realize it with your family before you become strangers.”

By Pepper Marcelo

There was a time when many of the jobs Filipinos could land abroad were as maids, seamen and manual laborers. Over time, more and more of our skilled and trained workers have joined the exodus for higher wages and a better life.

Not too long ago, the mass exodus of nurses left local hospitals and the country’s health system in disarray, although the situation has been reversed in recent years (there is now an oversupply of nurses) as the global demand for medical workers slowed down. But the overseas demand for other occupations such as scientists, engineers, IT professionals, accountants and even teachers remains, tempered only in the past three years by the global financial crisis.

In the face of the unabated brain drain, one would think that Filipinos have come to accept the phenomenon as a fact of life, even a desirable one for many well-paid migrant workers. It took a triple whammy in August to revive the national debate on the seriousness of the problem.

First to shake the country was the news last August that 25 pilots of the Philippine Airlines have flown overseas, particularly the Middle East and Asia where they were offered nearly triple their salary at PAL. The mass resignation forced PAL to cancel a number of their flights.

A few weeks later, another mild tremor followed. The country’s weather bureau – the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) – landed in the news for two related reasons. First, it failed to make an accurate forecast of an oncoming storm, earning a presidential reprimand. President Benigno Aquino III later fired the chief weather forecaster, Dr. Prisco Nilo, in the aftermath of Typhoon Basyang’s fury that left dozens dead. (Dr. Nilo opted for early retirement and left for Australia last Nov. 2.)

The second reason for PAG-ASA’s sudden notoriety was the announcement that the agency had lost 24 of its key personnel, many of them veteran weather forecasters, who had resigned to join the state weather agency of Dubai. The shortage of experienced personnel was one reason cited by the agency why bungled its job on ‘Basyang’.

The third whammy was the announcement by the Department of Environment and Natural Resources that 83 of its geologists had left for overseas work over the past three years, hindering government programs for mapping earthquake faults and mineral resources.

To be sure, government officials are fully aware of the negative impact of the OFW phenomenon on the local economy. After all, it has been the official policy of every administration since the 1970s to export labor as a means of easing the domestic unemployment situation and at the same time generate foreign exchange. Today, between nine to 10 million OFWs are toiling in nearly a hundred countries. They remitted US$17.3 billion in 2009, accounting for more than 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

The brain drain syndrome has proved to be a tough nut to crack. While everyone agrees that the labor export policy should only be a stop-gap measure, there are no easy answers on how to minimize, if not stop, the brain drain.

Likewise, there seems to be no unanimity on how serious the problem is. Some are already pressing the panic button. But there are those who claim that there is really no “widespread brain drain,” but a general mismanagement by government of the working talent that we have.

“We have so many that have ‘brains,’ but they’re either unemployed or employed in the wrong industry,” says Loreto Soriano, executive director of the Federated Associations of Manpower Exporters (FAME), Inc. “It is not true that most of the OFWs are professionals and skilled workers. Pilots and forecasters are very small in numbers.”

Data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) support Soriano’s contention. POEA statistics show that new or first-time OFWs during the last decade numbered about 300,000, with only 20% of them categorized as skilled, highly skilled and professionals. The rest are labeled as low-skilled and unskilled, including domestic helpers. “If we relate to the number of college/university graduates every year that averaged 900,000 during the last ten years, there is no brain drain,” argues Soriano.

According to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), in 2007 there were more than 600,000 enrollees in Nursing, and more than 500,000 in Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM) and Information Technology (IT), but only 40,000 were enrolled in Engineering and related disciplines.

The unabated mass production of nursing graduates has inevitably led to an oversupply of nurses. Today, there are more than 200,000 licensed nurses who cannot land overseas jobs either due to a soft demand or lack of the required hospital work experience. Local hospitals, which experienced a severe nurse shortage about five years ago, are turning down a long list of applicants, some of them willing to pay just to get experience.

“Thus, we see tens of thousands of nurses, engineers, HRM specialists, Information Technologists and teachers employed in call centers, Business Process Outsourcing (BPO), sprawling malls and food-chains like Jollibee, McDonald’s and Kentucky,” observes Soriano.

He blames skills mismatch as the culprit, pointing to the failure of the educational system to produce the right graduates needed by the labor market. He notes that despite a huge domestic workforce, thousands of jobs – mostly in technical and vocational fields – remain unfilled due to lack skilled personnel. As a result, a number of factories and light and heavy industries have closed down or moved overseas.

“Local industries during the past 30 years, they are gone. We practically do not have manufacturing, garment, leather goods, cannery and fabrication industries anymore,” laments Soriano.

In its place is the Service Sector, which provides more than half – almost 63% – of the nation’s entire economic output. But Soriano says, “This sector does not provide permanent employment, but only contractualization.” These lopsided contractual arrangements for the supply of workers have also become a factor for migration, says former labor undersecretary Susan Ople. “Contractual workers subsist on five-to-six-month job contracts while a legally deployed overseas Filipino worker has a guaranteed two-year contract with a fixed and higher salary,” she said.

According to Myrna Asuncion, an assistant director at the National Economic and Development Authority, the government has been seeking ways to upgrade salaries and benefits. “But local salaries can only go up by so much before they start hurting the competitiveness of local industries,” she told Agence France-Presse. “We want to provide employment opportunities in the Philippines but there are some sectors that say salaries are already too high.”

Soriano suggests that the government conduct a reality check of the present economic system. “Both government and private sector business must realize that our economy is sick with what I call the ‘Philippine Syndrome,’” he says. Also called the “Dutch Disease,” it results in a high remittance growth rate, leading to stronger peso and increased imports and government debt, which ultimately discourages domestic production, says Soriano. This must be tempered or stopped, he adds, otherwise we will have a “jobless growth-economy,” which encourages smuggling and promotes corruption.

Soriano says monetary authorities should review their policies, noting that a strong peso leads to a rise in cost of local products, which in turn lead consumers to opt for cheaper imported goods to the detriment of local businessmen and workers. He suggests a national economic policy that is balanced, inward-looking and nationalistic in order to support our basic manufacturing, agricultural, light and heavy industries. “That will provide permanent employment to our graduates, thereby creating a large pool of qualified workers for local and overseas jobs,” he says.