Slashed!

By Rolo B. Cena
The Gulf Files
19 September 2010

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - On the 8th of September 2010, one of the national broadsheets bannered a news headline stating that the Administration slashed by half OFW legal assistance fund in 2011 budget.

In the same article, Nueva Vizcaya Representative Carlos Padilla stated matter-of-factly that Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) contribute the aggregate amount of US$17 billion in remittances.

The Philippine Migrant Act, the Law that protects the welfare of the Overseas Filipino Workers specifically provides that the OFW Legal Assistance Fund should not be less than P100 million. What was budgeted by the Department of Foreign Affairs was only P50 million. In the Budget hearing, this was reduced to a meager P27 million.

Thinking out loudly, translating US$17 billion into the wobbling Philippine Peso amounts to P765 billion, using P45 to a dollar foreign exchange rate. What is P27 million to P765 billion? Or, to put icing on the cake once more, what is P100 million to P765 billion? Compared to the proposed total budget, the P765 billion remittances of OFWs figuratively and literally comprise 46.25 percent of the total P1.654 trillion budget requirements.

What a biased and unfounded way to cut cost! The administration is profoundly insane. What actually are their bases, legal or otherwise, in cutting the budget?

Austerity measures, especially when carefully planned and effectively implemented, contribute towards attaining business or defined objectives. However, when in the process sensitive issues are not addressed to, then something can ultimately go wrong.

Hey, OFWs is a revenue center, it is not a cost center.

Migrantes, hailed to be the modern day Philippine heroes contribute a bigger slice to the total national coffer. Statistics and records cannot deny this fact. Congressmen, senators, and other government officials eat the biggest part of the pie. Why resize the slice for these breed? Why not the slice of these mentally-dehydrated members of the houses who do nothing but make name tags for their selfish sakes, imprudently spend or secretly pocket the barrels?

Which is more important, spending portion of the OFW remittance for their welfare or spending the money for the personal gains of public officials - people in the Houses and Malacanang included? Aren’t these people citizens of the country who deserve the same treatment as the people in the Houses? Aren’t the OFWs citizens of the country who deserve the services as the underprivileged citizens of Bagong Silang or Payatas do?

Which is more important, the personally-vested and coward people of the cabinet who do not even know how to protect the President from danger and international shame or the group of citizens such as OFWs whose sweats and bloods equals US$17 billion annually for the country? Which is more important, all the President’s men who do the talk and never walk their talks or the zealous OFWs who riskily cross the boarders of these uncharted Kingdoms just to bring home the most fabled bacon for the family and country?

Which is important, the mentally deranged men of the ailing Philippine politics or the nostalgic and mentally agonized OFWs who help save the ailing Philippine economy?

People of the Philippines, truly, we have elected “his mother’s son” without a doubt.

Fine! Half the budget for the OFW Legal Assistance Fund is slashed! Then, why not slash the budget of these departments, congressmen and senators? By far, this is the best way to cut cost. From P1.654 trillion to half is an attractive result of the simplest arithmetical operations. After all, all government officials have the difficulty of defending their spending with the Commission on Audit. This is to me, the best austerity measure of all times.

It is even the best way to stop congressmen and senators’ from womanizing, acquiring unexplained wealth, or conducting pot sessions in Hong Kong or gambling in Macau and Las Vegas using public funds. Lo! These activities are even more horrendous and shameful than the August 23, 2010 botched hostage rescue operations that shocked the whole world.

Fine! Half of the budget for the OFW Legal Assistance Fund is slashed! Then, why not dispose all these Non-Performing Assets (GOCCs) that annually share the highest cost? In 2009, the salaries of the key personnel of these 36 (which are NPAs) out of 120 GOCCs amounted to at least P57 million. This year, from January to May, the government continued to subsidize these GOCCs in the aggregate amount of P7.28 billion. These GOCCs suck the hard earned money of the country, to state what is more hurting, and the money of the OFWs. What a shame on these people who monthly receive high salaries and lucrative perks just to run these people-owned-and-subsidized sunset companies. Gee! The sun will never ever rise on them, take them out of the list now or else they will continue to rot the whole pie.

And what is Sec. Alberto Romulo in the Department of Foreign Affairs doing? Plotting the Budget to P50 million when by Law it should have been double seems to me an alienation from his form and functions. I wonder if he ever sited the legality of the reduction the way Albay’s Representative Edcel Lagman did?

Whew! Grandstanding for a president is worth a lifetime’s fortune disguised in a staple from a domestic animal called pork in a barrel. Feeding this animal is worth more than a million lives of agony-laden, true-home alienated Filipino migrant workers.

Slashed! Who is earning for whose spending, anyway? Whatever happened to Flor Contemplacion now?