Boats remain sure way of pumping Pinoy money from overseas

by JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

[Editor’s note: The exact location of the remittance system described in the story has been hidden to protect against unscrupulous individuals and groups]

SOMEWHERE in Visayas – PUMP boats. Of course, pump boats.
In a world where cash passes hands at the push of a button, pump boats remain the fastest, surest method of remittance from overseas Filipinos to their families in remote areas of the Philippines’s southern island-group.
For the past 41 years, Ismael F. has relied on these boats to send money from Chicago, United States.
This method “has been tried and tested,” Ismael told the OFW Journalism Consortium during his vacation for a fiesta celebration of his coastal town.
He eschews newer, technology-backed remittance channels for Filipinos abroad, saying using the pump boat — or aviso — method allows him to avoid remittance charges.
Ismael sends a minimum US$50 or US$100 every month. “But I also continually provide tuition and fees to a relative. Thus, I send some P25,000 (nearly US$500) every semester,” he added.
Remittances sent through non-banking channels and informal practices, such as the method used by Ismael, are a five-year US$8.24-billion resource that the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) hopes would pass through the formal banking system (see related story ‘Chunk of Pinoy cash fro abroad still outside bank sphere in past five years’).
Ismael sends his remittance through relatives in Manila who then take a ferry boat to the province’s center of commerce, where Western Union and several banks operate.
From the center, his relatives take a jeep to the tip of the island where they would catch a boat.
The boat stops by a town and then reaches islets where the money is handed over personally to its recipient.
Ismael’s money takes 10 hours from Manila via ferry to the mainland or the provincial capital and two to three hours from there to in-between-islands boat travel.
“Even a simple snail mail here takes a month before it reaches the first boat stop,” Ismael explained.

In-formalism
THE archipelagic nature of the Philippines has made it difficult for remittances to directly reach families, especially in far-flung rural areas, according to a 2004 study by the Asian Development Bank.
Even as a Philippine bank can serve an average of 10,982 clients (as of December 2003 BSP estimates), the geographical disparity of these banks “is quite pronounced,” the study added.
Head offices and branches of banks, the study said, are concentrated in the National Capital Region where Manila belongs. South of the capital, roughly 40 to 80 kilometers away is the Southern Tagalog region that has only 1,267 bank offices, 578 ATM units, 211 post offices, and 3,238 cooperatives. If all these outlets are allowed to receive remittances, each commercial bank, rural bank, cooperative, or post office will serve an estimated 271 OFWs in that group of landlocked islands.
Rural banks are not yet formally allowed to receive foreign exchange, but a recent approval from the Monetary Board will soon see the country’s 765 rural banks directly receive money from OFWs abroad.
The BSP also recently reported that informal remittances have dropped last year, explaining that OFWs are remitting more to formal banking channels.
Still the ADB study maintained that about 38 percent of recipients in the Philippines would prefer the informal and non-banking methods, “primarily due to lower remittance costs.”
Ismael said using the pump boat method saves him US$7 for every US$100 he sends.
He added the US$7 he pays somehow covers the estimated P2,000 transportation cost and incidental expenses of the courier.

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PRC to test million-dollar online exam system on seafarers

by LEO J. SANTIAGO

MANILA – NO more lining up for hours under a hot sun to register for the professional exam. No more waiting in agony for the release of results.
By May, seafarers wanting to take examinations for marine deck officer licenses can register online, take the walk-in computerized exam, and get the results soon after the test.
The Professional Regulation Commission announced recently in a forum the readiness of the computerized walk-in examination process under the Licensure Examination and Registration Information System (Leris).
The long wait is over, PRC chairperson Leonor Tripon-Rosero said, five years after Leris was mandated by a law to computerize examinations to be given to Filipinos from 42 types of professions seeking license or renewal of their license. These include teachers, nurses, mechanical engineers, dentists, and x-ray technicians, among others.
Seafarers would be the first sector on which the system would be applied.
Private firm Geo-Spatial Solutions Inc. (GSI) is crafting and implementing the electronic design that would process thousands of items in a databank of questions, according to Capt. Constantino Arcellana Jr., who is also a member of the board of marine deck examiners.
GSI president Efren Ricalde Jr. confirmed they are readying the platform to implement the Leris for seafarers.
The implementation of Leris was nine years late in coming.
The PRC blamed the delayed implementation on the lack of funding even as the Norwegian Government and the International Maritime Organization donated US$1.2-million in 1997 and a seafarer’s union also donated 40 computers recently.
The PRC also pointed to the lack of security, but Ricalde said this concern has been addressed by GSI as the system would use “state-of-the-art” firewalls and other security features.
“We would not leave any window of opportunity for hackers,” Ricalde said, adding that only professional board examiners could access several points in the system.
A successful online registration and computerized examination at the PRC by seafarers would serve as impetus for offering the system to other professions, Ricalde said.

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Chunk of Pinoy cash from abroad still outside bank sphere in past five years

by JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

MANILA – NEARLY a fifth of cash being sent by Filipinos abroad for the past five years remained outside the sphere of banks and formal channels, data from the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas shows.
The country’s balance of payments data, which the BSP revised recently to comply with a new International Monetary Fund reporting standard, showed that overseas Filipinos sent some US$8.24 billion of cash remittances through informal channels from 2001 to 2005.
The amount is 17.18 percent of the five-year total US$47.975 billion cash remittances of overseas Filipinos, data from country’s central bank showed.
Under the revised BoP data, cash worth US$39.735 billion flowed through formal banking channels.
In terms of year-on-year share, money sent via informal channels appears to decline: from 21.89 percent of the total remittances in 2001, 19.99 percent in 2002, 16.65 percent in 2003, to 16.66 percent in 2004.
Informally-sent remittances further declined to 13.06 percent of the total US$12.3 billion the BSP recorded as money sent by overseas Filipinos to the country last year.
According to BSP director Iluminada Sicat, this chunk worth US$1.6 billion represents cash remittances through informal channels while the US$10.7 billion “represents hard currencies that drive exchange rates, as well as the domestic economy.”
The latter amount, explains the head of BSP’s Department of Economic Statistics, would near-accurately describes the real contribution of remittances to Philippine economy, which has been overtaken by its neighbors since the Asian financial crisis almost a decade ago.
“We have consistently told the public that the OFW [overseas Filipino workers] remittances we have reported are those that pass through the banks,’” Sicat told the OFW Journalism Consortium.
The BSP is just on its second year of using the “new series” to report remittances in measuring the BoP.
The country’s BoP, which measures the Philippines’s total trade with other countries, had a surplus of US$2.407 billion in 2005, a big improvement from a US$280 million deficit in 2004. As of February this year, the BoP position revealed a US$2.209 billion surplus.

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Advocates want say in Malacañang OFW bank bid

by JULIE JAVELLANA-SANTOS

MANILA – MIGRANT advocates may be split on Malacañang’s go-ahead to build a bank of overseas migrant workers via migrant workers’ pooled funds but they agreed OFWs should be given say; some even ownership of the project.
“This government move again insulted many unsung heroes by diverting our money without due consultation,” wrote Ronnie Abeto of the Saudi Arabia-based Pusong Mamon Task Force, one of several groups of overseas Filipinos connected to the Internet.
“The issue here is not actually the creation of an overseas Filipino workers’ bank, but the use of OWWA funds,” an email by another Saudi Arabia-based OFW, Francis Oca, said.
Abeto and Oca were two of many OFWs consulted via email by the OFW Journalism Consortium after President Gloria Arroyo reportedly approved taking P1 billion from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration to transform the Postal Bank into an OFW bank.
Francisco Aguilar Jr. of the Federation of Migrant Workers (FMW) said in an e-group discussion that he is apprehensive over the president's pronouncement since it would involve use of OWWA's resources without any consultation.
We reiterated the clamor to have proper representation and consultation with the OFW sector and to put in place full transparency of the project, wrote Aguilar, who is also president and chief executive of FMW Group of Companies.
Robert Ceralvo, who claims leadership of a Filipino community in New Jersey, United States, shared the “same fear”.
If OFWs will not be consulted, included, and vested in this OFW bank project, chances are, it will benefit more the powerbrokers than any of us [and] OFWs, Ceralvo’s email ran without explaining how this would come about.
Edna Aquino, trustee of the Centre for Migrant Filipinos (CMF) in London, England, also wrote that the decision “seemed like a unilateral one”.
She posited the following questions: “Why should the [Postal Bank] be given this kind of authority solely on the basis of its 18 branches and P30 million profit? How can it compete against the other mega banks with track records in the remittance services? And if the bank is for OFWs and the money for running it will come from OFW contributions, the more they should be consulted on the issue.”

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Absentee voting book still good read amid charter change bids

BY LEO J. SANTIAGO JR. and ISAGANI DE LA PAZ

QUEZON CITY--WHAT’S blue and nearing obsolescence but still worth reading?It’s the book entitled “Overseas Absentee Voting: The Philippine Experience,” whose author is preventing the issue from dying amid renewed efforts to change the country’s constitution.
Not that author and lawyer Henry Rojas is bothered over potential revenue loss from his book’s sale—at P250 or just under US$5 each from publisher and nonprofit group Center for Migrant Advocacy (CMA)-Philippines; Rojas is afraid overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) may again miss out on the deal.“If charter change pushes through, the right to vote of overseas Filipinos might be taken away again,” Rojas told the OFW Journalism Consortium.
He said opposing moves to change the 10-year-old Philippine Constitution is a “logical option.”
The book offers keen insight on an instrument of suffrage that dates back to a hundred years when Australians first enacted overseas voting under its Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1902.The 225-page “blue book,” printed with money from the OFW Journalism Consortium’s partner Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, shows the nuts and bolts of Republic Act 9189, or the Overseas Absentee Voting Act of 2003.
While the book is a strain to read, full of legalese speak and lacking literary flair, it provides an astute look on the circuitous law and its application in the 2004 elections. Rojas offered this reason for getting through the quagmire of legalese: “Active participation in elections is one of the many ways we contribute to nation building. Thus, the right and opportunity to vote as an absentee voter are too important to be treated lightly.”
The books is designed to help overseas Filipinos and NGOs in their advocacy efforts for reforms in the enacted law and in Philippine elections, and to help them grasp the complexity of the country’s immediate electoral history. (http://www.ofwjournalism.net)

OFWs: Pirates from the Caribbean?

By PATRICIA MARCELO and ISAGANI DELA PAZ

MANILA--SOME overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) may resemble Johnny Depp, but unlike the esteemed pirate, they are regarded as "unwitting" couriers of bootleg videos to and from the Philippines, experts told the OFW Journalism Consortium.An official of the Association of Video Distributors of the Philippines (AvidPhil) said the government should look into this.
AvidPhil, a national trade association promoting the video industry, made the call after the United States Trade Representative removed the Philippines from the priority list of governments that American firms accuse of allowing intellectual property theft.
The USTR placed the Philippines under the Priority Watch List of countries that could be placed under trade sanctions due to "rampant" IP rights infringements including optical media piracy, copyright and trademark violations of all types, importation of counterfeit merchandise, software piracy of all types, and bootleg cable television.
The PWL is a step above a US trade sanction and below the Ordinary Watch List.According to the Philippine IP office, upgrading the Philippines to the status of OWL –four days before President Gloria Arroyo declared a state of emergency– effectively removes the threat of US trade sanctions against the country.
A negative finding from the USTR, the IP Office added could have affected the country's export relations to the US. According to a recent International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) report, the Philippines has to satisfy the USTR's discretionary criteria, which include providing "adequate and effective protection of intellectual property rights" to qualify for unilaterally granted trade preferences.
The Philippines participates in the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program, offering duty-free imports of certain products into the US.From January to November 2005, nearly US$936-million worth of Philippine goods, or 11.1 percent of the country's total exports to the US, entered the US duty-free under the GSP program, the IIPA said in its report dated February 13, 2006.
The Philippines should not continue to expect such favorable treatment at this level when it fails to meet the discretionary criteria, the IIPA said before the USTR decided to upgrade the country into the OWL. The threat to be downgraded back to the PWL remains, according to AvidPhil."Authorities should look into the products that are being brought by the OFWs into the country as well as those being brought abroad because some of these are pirated materials," said AvidPhil executive director Eduardo Sazon.
A member of the Intellectual Property Coalition (IPC), AvidPhil has been fighting piracy in the country since it expanded its members last year to include distributors of non-motion picture videograms such as karaoke and music videos. "They (OFWs) are unwittingly becoming tools in carrying pirated materials," Sazon added without giving statistics or details supporting his views. (http://www.ofwjournalism.net)

DAWN rising on growth pains in Japanese-Filipino children advocacy

By CES RODRIGUEZ

MANILA--THEY were just a bunch of moms and their kids going through the perky but amateur motions of a performance typical of school programs. They flailed, they warbled, they minced through skits brick-heavy with slogans and lessons and meaning.
They could have been treated to indulgent applause but instead, an audience composed of embassy officials and legislators, journalists and development sector workers struggled to hold back their tears. The performers, after all, were former migrant women from Japan and their Japanese-Filipino children.
Called Teatro Akebono, they embodied the grim—and hopeful—purpose of the day: marking the tenth anniversary of the Development Action for Women Network or DAWN through a conference aimed at shining a brighter light on the issues of migration and trafficking.DAWN is an NGO that focuses on assisting returning distressed migrant women from Japan and their Japanese-Filipino children who “need to regain and strengthen their sense of dignity and self-worth and reclaim their wholeness,” according to executive director Carmelita Nuqui.
Nuqui’s presentation cited that for a decade, DAWN has handled about 350 cases involving women and 440 involving Japanese-Filipino children.These cases, she said, include work contract violations, abuse and harassment in the work place, abandonment of Japanese husband and other marital concerns, children’s right to paternal recognition and support, as well as the citizenship of the children.
“The number of women and children seeking assistance from DAWN increases everyday,” Nuqui added.
The increase comes from referrals from the Embassy of Japan in Manila, Philippine government agencies, “as well as those who have read about us in the papers and heard about DAWN from radio and television programs that have featured the organization,” Nuqui said.With Japan’s imposition of stricter immigration laws last year, DAWN could expect a further rise in these cases. (http://www.ofwjournalism.net)

Recruiters warn Japan's migration law forcing entertainers to go illegal

By PATRICIA MARCELO

MANILA - CONSTRICTIVE labor processing to Japan has displaced Filipino entertainers who, according to their promoters and recruiters, are forced to engage in illegal activities to ensure they can still work in that country.
"Arranged or fixed marriages become rampant now. While they (OPAs) are still in Japan, they are already paying much amount of money to their prospective husband to marry them in the Philippines so that they can go back there to work," said Cristy Gatchialian, president of the Philippine Entertainment Exporters and Promoters Association (Peepa).
Gatchialian and other leaders of the Confederated Association of Licensed Entertainment Agencies (Calea) that groups Peepa, the Philippine Association of Recruitment Agencies Deploying Artists (Parada), and the Reliable Entertainment Promoters Association Inc. (REPA), said more overseas performing artists (OPAs) have entered in arranged marriages with the Japanese or falsified their documents in order to go back to Japan.
Gatchialian, who is also vice president of Calea, added an entertainer who wants to ensure her return to Japan pays as much as 300,000 yen under a payment scheme.
"The problem worsened," said Parada and Calea president Lorenzo Langomez.Gatchialian called the problem "a form of human trafficking".Gatchialian and leaders of promoters and recruiters' organizations spoke a year after the Japanese government tightened immigration policy against foreign entertainers, specifically OPAs. The move, formally began March 15, 2005, was the Japanese government's response to a United States State Department report that tagged Tokyo two years ago as one of the countries where human trafficking was rampant.Washington 's State Department placed Japan in the Tier 2 Watch List of the 2004 Trafficking in Persons Report.The US government said it believes most OPAs in Japan were exploited and ended up in flesh trade.Ironically, according to Gatchialian, this experience that Washington wants to avoid occurs among Filipino women entertainers, a year after the Japanese toed the US line.Now, if we follow provisions of the new law, a Filipino woman "married" to a Japanese "can legally work in Japan," according to Gatchialian."She can sit down with the customers and go out with them without the fear of being penalized if caught," Gatchialian said, adding that the club owner could not be punished. (www.ofwjournalism.net)