{"id":8691,"date":"2019-10-22T08:12:26","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T00:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/?p=8691"},"modified":"2019-10-22T11:21:21","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T03:21:21","slug":"until-our-mary-janes-come-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/until-our-mary-janes-come-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Until our Mary Janes come home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Did you also feel your\nworld stop in 2015 when we thought that Indonesia had executed overseas\nFilipino worker (OFW) Mary Jane Veloso? Please, not another Flor Contemplacion,\nnot another OFW coming home in a balikbayan<\/em> box. Putting her kids\nthrough school was Mary Jane\u2019s only compulsion for leaving her family and\nhomeland for any available work elsewhere, as opportunities here are quite\nlimited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her recruiters\nsurrendered to the authorities right before her death sentence was carried out.\nThey were the ones that gave Mary Jane the luggage with packs of heroin. Long\nstory short, she was granted reprieve on the 11th hour but remains incarcerated\nand on death row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The happy story is\nthat the Philippine Supreme Court (SC) recently granted the motion filed by Mary\nJane\u2019s family, through the National Union of People\u2019s Lawyers (NUPL), for her\nto be allowed to testify against her recruiters. But this is after a series of\nappeals and rulings that prevented Mary Jane from telling her side of the story\nin court. This may just be the very opportunity for her to step closer to\nfreedom, say her family and counsels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our wish for Mary Jane\nis not only for her case to be dismissed but for her to be able to come home.\nIt is a wish not only for her but for all OFWs who would otherwise prefer to\nstay in the Philippines if not for the lack of jobs and insufficient pay here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The number of OFWs\nleaving daily has more than doubled since the time that Mary Jane first worked\nabroad. In 2009 around 2,500 Filipinos left to work abroad daily. The number\nreached 6,298 in 2018, according to Filipino migrant workers\u2019 rights watchdog Migrante\nInternational. In contrast, only an average of 2,260 new jobs were created\ndaily in that year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to IBON the\naverage number of jobs created per administration is most dismal under the\ncurrent administration. Under the Corazon Aquino administration an average of\n810,000 jobs were generated annually from 1987-1992; under Fidel Ramos 489,000\nfrom 1993-1998; under Joseph Estrada 842,000 from 1999-2001; under Gloria\nArroyo 764,000 from 2002-2010; under Noynoy Aquino 827,000 from 2011-2016; and under\nRodrigo Duterte, 81,000 from 2017-2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Measly wages in the\nPhilippines have also pushed Filipinos out of the country. The highest National\nCapital Region minimum wage of Php537 falls way short of the IBON-estimated\nPhp1,009 living wage for a family of five (July 2019). We know relatives and\ncompatriots who are nurses, doctors and engineers who receive salaries abroad\nthat can be four or more times of how much they can earn here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yes, OFWs have been\nhailed as new heroes for the huge remittances that have helped buoy the economy\nfor many years. Labor export has been a policy since the time of Ferdinand\nMarcos. The Noynoy Aquino government meanwhile said that Filipino workers are\nworld class – did he not mean for providing the global market with remarkable\nskills and among the cheapest labor in the world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But haven\u2019t this\nadministration and its predecessors promised at one point or another to make\nthe local economy capable of generating millions of stable jobs so that\nFilipinos would not have to leave the country for work? IBON\u2019s midyear 2019\nreport showed that remittances have actually been slowing due to the crisis\ngripping the globe. After the 2008-2009 crisis, remittances grew by an average\nof 6.4% annually, but slowed in the period 2017-2018 to an average of 3.7%\nannually.  It does sound shaky for a\ncountry to rely on external sources of wealth without developing its own\npotential industries such as agriculture and manufacturing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is even more\ndisturbing that government plays up the gains of having a huge OFW base while\nit knows the perils and troubles it puts migrant workers through. The travail\nbegins with having to muster hundreds of thousands of pesos in placement fees,\nand various other fees aside from air fare; being physically separated from\nfamily; thrown into a foreign culture; subjected to different levels of\ndiscrimination, and verbal and physical abuse; and at times even denied support\nfrom our very own Philippine consuls abroad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, elementary\noccupations and service and sales work comprised the biggest chunks of OFWs at\n37.1% and 18.8%, respectively. Majority of those in elementary occupations or\n58.7% were female.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Migrante\u2019s accounts of cases similar to Mary Jane\u2019s \u2013 some milder, some worse \u2013 are piling up. There will be more Mary Janes until things\nsubstantially change for the better back home. Good thing we aren\u2019t totally\nhelpless nor incapable of pushing that. Mary Jane\u2019s plea for clemency was\nrejected more than once but this only gained her more support both in the\nPhilippines and in 150 countries that delivered over 250,000 signatures for the\n#SaveMaryJane campaign. It\u2019s still a long shot, but we just keep trying to get\nour act for change together until our Mary Janes come home. ###<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Photo from Bulatlat<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did you also feel your world stop in 2015 when we thought that Indonesia had executed overseas Filipino worker (OFW) Mary Jane Veloso? Please, not another Flor Contemplacion, not another OFW coming home in a balikbayan box. Putting her kids through school was Mary Jane\u2019s only compulsion for leaving her family and homeland for any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":8692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-withbanner.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_expiration-date-status":"saved","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"categories":[2048,2049],"tags":[1834,1902,2090,347,2088,1298,2089,1463,116,2047],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8691"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8693,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8691\/revisions\/8693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibon.org\/tl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}