by ENZA UDA

THEY HAVE been returning by the hundreds per day in the last several weeks, and even the current dispute between Philippine and Taiwanese aviation authorities has not stopped overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Taiwan from coming home in droves. But while most of them are probably glad to be home, chances are they won’t be feeling that way for long.

The companies for whom many of these OFWs had worked had been rendered either temporarily or permanently out of business by an earthquake that struck Taiwan late last month. Now jobless, these ex-OFWs may be seeking employment overseas again. But with much of the world in recession or in the midst of political turmoil, the overseas job market has shrunk, and most of them are bound to end up staying home for good.

That could mean fighting over the few jobs to be had here, as well as trying to reacquaint themselves with what for many have become the now foreign ways of home. Obviously, many of these OFWs will need help. But as other returning OFWs have already found out, they will be getting too little of that from the government that likes to call them “modern day heroes.”

Indeed, when pushed to comment on the real impact of the reintegration services offered by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), one official there admits that what they have achieved so far “are just a drop in the bucket.”

Exactly how many overseas workers come home to stay each year remains unclear as the task of keeping count is considered too taxing and too expensive by government agencies. But the 4.5 million contract and undocumented workers are bound to return to the Philippines at some point, with reasons that range from natural disasters, such as what happened with the OFWs in Taiwan, to terminated contracts, to illness and abuse.

Indications are a large number of these OFWs are coming home unprepared for what they will face here. To make matters worse, their home country is as unready to deal with them. This is despite the fact that OWWA, the government agency supposed to provide welfare assistance and protection services to registered overseas workers and their dependents, has offered livelihood and skills training programs to returning OFWs since 1988. These days, it also provides social counseling to traumatized returnees.

But OWWA’s highly centralized system renders these inaccessible to many OFWs in the provinces. Administrative problems and a general lack of continuity also mar the programs’ effectivity, while the way the agency allocates funds has been called into question by state auditors. According to the 1997 Commission on Audit (COA) report on OWWA, for instance, only 36 percent of the P259.35 million the agency spent that year went to programs and projects. In contrast, 62 percent went to operating expenses.

But the comparative paltry sum that the OWWA spends on reintegration programs looks like it is even being wasted. The COA report said the efficiency and morale of the OWWA staff were being dragged down by high absenteeism, tardiness and the inefficient distribution of workload. At the same time, the International Catholic Migration Commission says that 70 percent of the returnees it has interviewed were unaware that the government runs reintegration programs.

Former domestic helper (DH) Naty (not her real name), for example, had already been home for several months before she heard about OWWA’s reintegration services. In truth, she was told about them by Kanlungan, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) that has provided her with shelter, counseling and legal support since her return in 1997.

Raped twice by the eldest son of her employer in Riyadh, Naty had sought the help of the OWWA Center there following her escape from her master’s household. Her OWWA case officer convinced her to make a deal with her abuser instead of filing a lawsuit. He did not tell her about OWWA’s counseling services back home or its other reintegration programs.

Naty was four months pregnant when she returned home. She has been jobless for the last two years, and has been barely making ends meet despite the modest support her family gives her and her child, aside from a small assistance from Kanlungan. The P50,000 settlement from her rapist has long been gone; she was never paid for the entire year that she worked in Riyadh. Naty says she had thought overseas employment would mean a better life for her. Today, however, the single mother who has a scant elementary education faces an even greater burden than before she left.

Naty was initially optimistic when she finally tried to avail of OWWA’s job placement services. But at 29, she was deemed too old for employment by the first two local employment agencies OWWA had referred her to.

She was more successful with the third referral, and she was placed as a janitor at a hospital. After 13 hours of non-stop cleaning with an hour-long break in between, Naty got a training allowance of P35. She was also offered P100 per day after the training was completed.

She never returned to the hospital. Instead, she brought her OWWA referral slip to work as a janitor in the GSIS (Government Service Insurance System) building for P150 a day. She’s still waiting for her new job to come through for her. As for what she thinks of OWWA’s reintegration services, Naty exclaims, “Diyos ko! Lahat ng sapatos ko sira. Ang buhok ko puti na. (My God! All my shoes have fallen apart. My hair has turned white.)”

The irony is that Naty can be considered lucky compared to other ex-OFWs who have approached OWWA for help. After all, she was one of the 10 an OWWA-run agency managed to place, out of a total of 934 returnees seeking referrals from it in the first six months of this year.

Of course, it is not the OWWA but the job market itself that puts a premium on youth and a college degree—often the two things that returning OFWs lack. In fairness, this may be among the reasons why OWWA also offers skills training and livelihood programs for returnees.

But labor experts, like Roger Bohning, director of the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Southeast Asia and the Pacific Multidisciplinary Advisory Team (SEAPAT) in Manila, are nevertheless disappointed with OWWA’s reintegration programs so far.

“The Philippines has the legislative and administrative basis to address the questions of return migration,” says Bohning. But, he says, OWWA’s “economic interventions, although very noble in their motivations, to the outsider, give the impression of a somewhat amateurish and probably quite inefficient undertaking that is driven as much by the demands of migrants’ households as by economic viability.…”

OWWA Director of Plans and Programs Antonieta Dizon seems frustrated as well. She says that whenever the agency changes its top officials, policies and programs get disrupted. “When the government’s new,” she says, “everything changes.”

That may help explain why the Replacement and Monitoring Center (RPMC), which is headed by Dizon herself, began operations more than three years after it was included among the provisions of the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act of 1995.

The RPMC is an inter-agency referral system that falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), but is run by the OWWA. It is actually the one that has been trying to place Naty, since job placement happens to be one of its services aimed specifically for returnees. The others are skills training, livelihood programs, job opportunity assessments and a database of skilled migrant workers for employers.

In its first six months of operation or from January to June this year, the RPMC says it referred 122 returnees to skills training and 24 to livelihood programs, while 38 participants attended a two-day seminar on business planning for small entrepreneurs. But Dizon admits, “I have not seriously thought about how to implement all the provisions of the RPMC. Even DOLE Secretary (Bienvenido) Leguesma and the DOLE are not yet resolved as to what really to do with the Center.”

The OWWA official does not say if perhaps her home agency has some suggestions of its own for the RPMC. What Dizon does say though is that results have to be “tangible” for the agency’s board to agree to pour money into a project. Whether or not those of the RPMC falls under this category is unclear, although Dizon hints that social or psychological assistance services may not be getting as much as they should largely because of this unwritten criterion.

Sociologists say, though, that OFWs do not even necessarily have to be survivors of traumatic experiences like Naty to need counseling. They say women workers especially go through more profound changes as a result of their stint abroad, compared to their male counterparts.

As academic Claribel Bartolome notes in a 1996 paper for the DOLE, overseas experience can lead to new habits and attitudes that may give rise to misunderstanding and the deterioration—or even break-up—of social relationships.

For many former DHs, coming home to their tired barangays of siestas and chismis could be quite a shock. Years abroad have made them used to the fast pace of city life, and the shift to leisurely ways in their provinces has not been easy.

“Life here is very simple and relaxed, not pressured like in Hong Kong,” says Yoly Cerbas, recently home from an eight-year stint as a DH in the former British colony. “I don’t go with the neighbors anymore because (after living abroad) you feel very different. You prefer staying home instead of chatting because overseas time is very precious, you don’t want to waste time chatting away. So I make myself busy improving the house, sewing, cleaning….”

Bartolome observes that OFWs often discover newfound independence and drive abroad, allowing the emergence of self-reliance, open-mindedness, respectfulness, thrift, and self-discipline. Or as Cerbas describes it: “Sometimes I feel very bored here. If I work, I work continuously, because I’m used to waking up very early and working until 10 or 11 at night. Your rest time is eating and going to the bathroom. I don’t like to relax and my husband always tells me to relax…I want something to do.”

These are not necessarily negative changes. But to neighbors who have not gone through similar experiences, such restlessness can be misconstrued as among the ways of “show-offs,” especially when the returnees no longer mingle as much with them as before.

Relationships with friends are not the only ones that tend to go awry. Long periods of separation especially cause enormous suffering on the part of both parents and children, as well as on husbands and wives. There have even been cases where OFWs return to families in which ties have either been weakened or severed completely.

One example is Irene (not her real name), from a sending community in Pangasinan. In 1992, she left her husband and then nine-year-old daughter to work in Hong Kong. By the time she came home for good last year, her husband had already married another woman, turning her now teenage daughter against her.

“My husband re-married and moved to another province in 1996 even if we’re not yet separated. I feel so sad and so angry,” she says, her face darkening with obvious pain. “And my daughter is different with me. She keeps blaming me for everything, the marital situation. She confides her problems to all other relatives, but she doesn’t treat me like I’m her mother. It hurts me so much.”

Compounding the problem, say NGO workers, is that counseling is often unavailable for people like Irene, and absolutely nil for the likes of Cerbas who is not even thought of as going through any kind of trouble. Malou Alcid of Kanlungan comments that if there are not even substantial services for returnees who have been victims of abuse, those who did not go through crisis situations abroad may well expect nothing.

OWWA Publication and Information Division Officer-in-Charge David Dicang, however, says this view is not entirely correct. He says OWWA does offer “social counseling” for the wives of overseas workers, but “mostly in the regions.” He even says that in the last few years, the program has been expanded to the husbands of female OFWs, as well as the families that are left behind.

Dizon, though, says that the OWWA may be hard pressed to successfully help all the returnees asking for its assistance. “It’s a difficult job to try to come up with a reintegration program,” she says. “It’s always been difficult to develop an approach that you hope will counter all the major factors affecting the situation of OFWs.”

“The OFW is a result of the economic problems of the entire country,” Dizon also points out. “What OWWA is trying to do is patch up, cater to specific problems and certain cases…It cannot respond to the other side of the problem—the return of OFWs, especially the return of many OFWs….”