The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) on Wednesday enumerated its plans on ensuring the protection and promoting the welfare and wellbeing of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
Speaking during the Malacañang Insider program, DMW Secretary Hans Leo Cacdac said the agency’s new programs or initiatives include modernizing the National Maritime Polytechnic (NMP) for the benefit of Filipino seafarers, improving the OFW shelters abroad, and strengthening the legal assistance program.
The NMP is a national maritime institution that updates and upgrades the capability and qualifications of maritime school graduates to keep them abreast with the continuing changes, innovations and development in the maritime industry. It also supplement the skills and competence of deck and engine licensed officers and ratings through job-oriented training programs.
“One basic and yet challenging endeavor we’re getting into is improving our facilities here and abroad. We have the National Maritime Polytechnic that was established during the Marcos Sr.’s administration in Tacloban – project of the First Lady at that time that we wish to modernize,” Cacdac said.
“And two, our shelters abroad. We wish to modernize and transform them to centers of excellence and training and should I say, places or venues where OFWs, Filipino communities could come together and socialize and train and have different types of courses that they could have to enhance their skills, recreational perhaps facilities also along those lines,” he added.
A much improved shelter will be called Migrant Workers Resource Center, said the DMW chief, noting it will be more than just a distressed worker shelter facility.
“Of course, we will still be mindful of distressed workers who need shelter abroad. But, improvement of our shelter would be another one that we are looking at,” Cacdac said.
Another measure would be the improvement of the legal assistance services, Cacdac said, adding that the DMW inherited last year the legal assistance program of the DFA.
Part of the plan is to organize a pool of lawyers abroad with a much higher standard of service, Cacdac said.
“Recently, we had some good news in the sense that we have convictions of perpetrators of OFW victims abroad in various cases of physical injury cases and rape cases. So, we are mindful of the progress in terms of our crime to achieve justice and obtain justice for our OFWs,” Cacdac said.
“So, we are strengthening our legal assistance program by hiring more lawyers, hiring in-house and external counsel, having more paralegals, having more Sharia lawyers on the Islamic side,” he said.
The goal is to boost and elevate the legal assistance services to higher metrics and standards so that the government can deliver quality services to OFWs seeking legal support, he added. | PND
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