Safe from Lebanon strife, Pinoys pine for work abroad

By Jay Garcia

Villamor Air Base—The wind howled and lashed thumb-size raindrops on the windows of the Airbus 310 taxiing the tarmac, but the storm has nothing on the bullets and bombs raining Lebanon.

Yet, the 232 Filipino Airbus passengers wished they were back in Lebanon.Even before their feet kissed Philippine soil, some of the first batch of Filipinos flown from the strife-ridden Middle East country, couldn't help but wish to go back abroad.

Efren Limon, 39, for one, already expressed his plan to go back to Lebanon, where fighting between Hizbollah guerillas and Israeli soldiers have grown fierce in the 15 days since the conflict began.Carrying two large green duffle bags on each shoulder, Limon didn't appear to have come from what other Filipinos like him described as a “nightmare.”

The dark-skinned Limon's teeth and lips below a combed moustache formed into a smile as he strolled into a hangar. He even waved at relatives, including his 33-year-old wife Cristina and their two-month-old son Gabriel Arturo, who were sitting and waiting for him at the back row of plastic chairs.“I didn't want to go back [to the Philippines] yet,” Efren told reporters Sunday afternoon here, the second day of a wet weekend.

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Commentary

Groups swap thoughts on Pinoys in Lebanon

by Isagani Dela Paz

MANILA--As stories in this packet were being processed, messages from several groups were also being swapped online after Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos (Ercof) president Ildefonso Bagasao forwarded a message that stemmed from one of the largest Filipino associations in the United States.

In his message that has spurred a thread, Bagasao said he decided to circulate his Los Angeles, USA-based cousin Paula Bagasao's message “because it gives us some first hand information on the conditions of Filipinos who have sought refuge in Fr. [Agustin] Advincula's church and how we may be able to help.”

“This is something we do not find in our local newspapers, which has decided to highlight the bickering and buck-passing among government officials.”Bagasao's cousin Paula forwarded a message dated July 29, 2006, from Doy Heredia of the National Federation of Filipino American Associations (Naffaa), an association of 500 Filipino groups and networks in the US.Heredia, on the other hand, cited the electronic mail from Arlene Machetta, the group's Southwest Region chair with the subject “NaFFAA Appeal - Help Filipinos Stranded in Lebanon”.

Machetta, in turn, also cited a message, dated July 28, 2006, from a certain Arsenio R. Martin, a doctor.

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Mobile phones not just for sending money, group shows

By Julie Javellana-Santos

MANILA—Two Filipino workers need immediate assistance within 24 hours, Riyadh-based operators of a six-month old mobile phone helpline service system revealed.

According to a Kingdom of Saudi Arabia-based group of overseas Filipino workers, some 250.2 OFWs have sent short messages via their wireless handheld telephones and required direct intervention or assistance.

“Since its launching last February 14, our archives show us an average of four to six SOS messages a day just for KSA alone—minus those walk-in calls from all over the region,” an electronic mail from advocacy group Pusong Mamon Task Force said June 24.

This means that within 130 days, a total of 780 messages have been received by the SOS SMS [short message system] Hotline System of PMTF and the nongovernment group Center for Migrant Advocacy Philippines.PMTF said that 60 percent of these SOS messages required “para-legal counselling on various labor and welfare problems, 25 percent require[d] direct intervention or assistance, while the remaining are plain queries on various government services.”

This means that some 468 messages sent to the system were about labor- and welfare-related issues, 195 were cries for help, and 117 were requests for information on government services.

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Activists downplay ASEM migration initiative

by JEREMAIAH M. OPINIANO

MANDALUYONG CITY—Inter-Regional cooperation through the Asia-Europe Meeting is now a decade old, but a regional advocacy network for migrant workers thinks nothing much will come out of ASEM regarding international migration.
Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA) regional coordinator William Gois told ASEM member-countries' ministries of labor that ASEM has yet to understand international migration issues fully beyond controlling borders and curtailing illegal immigration.
Migrants' rights are not yet integrated, Gois said at an forum mid-May sponsored by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Philippines (the strategic partner of the OFW Journalism Consortium).Gois' comment comes at a time when labor ministers of ASEM member-countries will meet for the first time this September in Berlin, Germany to discuss varied employment issues and the social dimensions of globalization.
The meeting also comes at a time when United States government officials are at odds on what to do with the continuing flow of productive non-Americans--mostly Asians--“making it” in the highly-capitalized society.After Berlin, ASEM heads of state will meet for the Sixth ASEM Summit on September 10-11 in Helsinki, Finland to tackle varied socio-economic issues, including the management of migratory flows between Asia and Europe.Migration discussions have been there for some time, says Gois, but he has yet to see “a genuine interdependence between migration, growth, and development through ASEM.”

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Special Edition on Financial Literacy for Overseas Filipinos and their Families (Part 2)

Experts say OFWs not ready for market
by William Alzona and Isagani de la Paz

QUEZON CITY—Tony Ranque's heart beats faster every time someone from a bank pops up a message on his mobile phone.
Like a lover on a tryst, Ranque punches the keypad where a set of numbers sways his decision whether or not to log on to the Internet, access his account, and buy or sell stocks he bought from three or four publicly-listed firms in the country's exchange.
He's in Bohol, 630 kilometers southeast of Manila, where his stocks, bought from savings of a 20-year work in Saudi Arabia, are one of millions traded at the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE).
The former overseas Filipino worker, however market savvy he appears, says it took him more than a year after returning from Riyadh before engaging in the market for securities. He advises against OFWs from following his lead.

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Internet improves investment initiatives: Q and A with Antonio Ranque

by Dennis D. Estopace
Editor

(Ed. -- Mr. Ranque worked for nearly two decades in Saudi Arabia and is project development officer of the NGO Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos. He also shares insights and tips on financial literacy to OFWs and their families here and abroad, such as during recent financial literacy seminars conducted by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas in Cebu, Laguna and Pampanga.)

QUEZON CITY – He’s his own guinea pig. Former overseas Filipino worker turned stock trader Antonio V. Ranque applies his trial-and-error style on the Philippine Stock Exchange trading board on himself first before giving solicited advice.

DDE: I heard you traded in stocks while working in Saudi Arabia.
AVR: No, no. It was after six months when I arrived after working in Saudi that I went into online trading. My entry into stocks was due to difficulties that I saw start-up businesses experienced. Mabuti kung mahilig sa negosyo ang maiiwan mong pamilya dito; yung sa akin wala. Personally, I also experienced that when I went into a taxi business years ago, but the driver I hired cheated me on many things. I lost P200,000 and the parcel of land I sold for that business. From that experience I learned it's difficult to go into the taxi business, especially here in Manila. Kung gusto mong kumita dito sa taxi, kailangan big time ka kaagad: minimum na 3 to 5 ang taxi units mo. Isipin mo, you're parting with hard-earned money on a vehicle that would depreciate in the long run e yung amortization mo di naman bumababa so dun lang mapupunta yung kinikita mo.

DDE: But I heard you're in online trading and it began in Saudi.
AVR: Ah, yes, I'm really into the Internet even when I was in Saudi. I was involved in a computer society and my line of “specialty” there was Internet for communication. I started with electronic mail, chatting, and then joining e-groups. Besides that, ang pinakamaganda talagang gamit ng Internet for OFWs like me is online news and online banking. I usually use my bank account to send money, especially to my children. For example, I send them allowance through an online bank transfer service called third-party enrolment. They'll send me an email and then I transfer money from my account to their savings account. From online banking, nagtuloy na ko sa online investment but months after I arrived here in the Philippines.

For the full Q & A, click here

Dutch offers treat for OFWs

by William Alzona

Makati City—What’s with the Filipinos and the Dutch?
The Netherlands have been the long-time home for the Philippine government's political foes and an estimated 12,000 to 15,000 Filipino workers and migrants.
Now, that country's second largest bank is leading initiatives in capturing money of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) for investment.
“Our target is money or funds of the Filipinos abroad that were just kept [in the banks],” Cesar C. Zulueta said in an interview.
Zulueta, a Filipino, is managing director and head of the investment management unit of the Amsterdam-headquartered International Netherlands Group (ING) Bank, which recently got Philippine regulators' nod to go ahead with its investment scheme.
“We are not targeting those [money] that they [OFWs] are remitting in the country because the banks are already capturing it,” Zulueta told the OFW Journalism Consortium.
Zulueta is referring to the ING's The Overseas Filipino Fund, a financial instrument to capture at least 90 percent of savings kept by an estimated eight million Filipinos working and living abroad.

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Despite soured deal, groups offer OFWs to milk dairy industry

by William Imperial and Arianne Apostol

QUEZON CITY—Despite the soured deal between the National Dairy Authority and the Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos, executives of both group bank on the dairy industry for migrant Filipino workers' investment.
"Even without the MOA, [the NDA] will be there to assist them in starting their own dairy business," NDA chief Sally Bulatao told the OFW Journalism Consortium.
"They [Ercof and other investors] are very much welcome," she added. Bulatao was referring to a memorandum of agreement that the NDA entered into with Ercof January this year that would allow migrant Filipinos to invest on livestock, specifically cows.
However, the NDA terminated the deal last March upon Ercof's withdrawal of its P100,000-advance payment.
“The only reason why we initiated the deposit was to have a priority in the cow purchase from NDA, given the scarce supply and the NDA being the main source,” Ercof president Ildefonso Bagasao told the OFW Journalism Consortium.
The deal was supposed to give Ercof the privilege of selecting and buying the cows ahead of other potential buyers. Dairy industry trader Danilo Fausto who represented Ercof in the NDA deal said he advised pulling out the money since he found another source of cows at lower prices.

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Special Edition on Financial Literacy for Overseas Filipinos and their Families (Part 1)

Ex-OFWs, advocates confront business realities
by Jeremaiah M. Opiniano

CALOOCAN—Former overseas Filipino workers trying their hands in business are discovering the cold truth of the market: rules are unforgiving to those unprepared.
While social enterprise advocates say the shock is due to lack of skills and training in entrepreneurship, former OFWs with businesses believe “luck” has something to do with it.
“[Going into business] is a daunting task when you don’t have a concrete business in mind before and upon your return to the Philippines,” Celestina Soriano said of her experience when she returned in 2002 after a 14-year domestic work stint in Hong Kong.
The 39-year-old mother of one owns a four-year-old home-based store, which was three-fourths full with food products.
She also operates a six-door apartment, currently all occupied by low-income families and students.She gave up her passenger transport business with the increasing prices of tricycle and jeepney parts, maintenance and fuel costs.
For Cecilia Icaonapo, operating a micro-store is enough.

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‘Ever been scammed?’

by Jeremaiah M. Opiniano
Editor’s note: Victim requested anonymity in exchange for baring her story.

SOMEWHERE IN LUZON ISLAND–Overseas worker’s wife Virginia Recuerda’s mind wanders to a Citibank check in her drawer every time a television show on scams began airing at Channel 11 recently.
That check for US$3,000 and the show remind her of how trust in other people could lead to financial disaster.
It’s exactly three years ago that Recuerda got that check–equivalent to three months her husband’s salary overseas–which she can’t transform into hard cash due to a scam known as Ponzi.
“See this? This check is our money,” Recuerda told the OFW Journalism Consortium Inc.
Her gaze measured, Recuerda doesn’t allow the check to leave her hands.
The check, a contract from a local holdings company, and a handwritten acknowledgment receipt add on to the memory of how she fell for an investment scheme in 2002.
Television actor Leo Martinez’s gaze and voice narrating the cases of scams that clutched Filipino investors like Recuerda only refresh her regrets of believing a certain Maridina Dizon that her US$4,000 investment could earn four percent.“I found her [Maridina] trustworthy since her husband’s an executive of a bank,” Recuerda recalls.

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Seafarers turn to cooperatives for borrowings

by LEO SANTIAGO

MANILA-Amparo Munariz and her seafarer husband have been members of a cooperative for nearly two decades now and they wouldn't have it any other way.Savings and investment groups like the Magsaysay Employees, Crew and Alottees Developmental Cooperative (Mecadec) that Munariz belong to have given seafarers an alternative to banks for borrowing and growing their money.
The Munariz couple, for one, has relied on from their cooperative to send their children to school, put up a sari-sari store, and pay the down payment for their house and lot in Better Living Subdivision, Parañaque.
The 46-year-old Amparo herself was able to graduate from a correspondence school through borrowing from Mecadec.With P20,000 share capital each, they are able to borrow twice every year by alternating as loan borrower.
Another member, Lauro Cabanilla, said he always turned to the cooperative for loans to fund his examinations and licenses since the 1980s.
It’s better than borrowing from usurers, Cabanilla said.Members Noel Abejar, 44, and wife also tapped the cooperative’s credit line to build their new house in Cavite.
As Abejar puts down boxes on the floor, he said they are thinking of borrowing again to opening a market stall near the house they are moving in.
What’s buzzing up these borrowings and financial activities?

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Bogus schemes galore

by Jeremaiah M. Opiniano

MANDALUYONG—Pseudo-investment schemes such as Ponzi and pyramiding do not only promise quick cash to ordinary investors, but also rake in millions to billions of pesos for operators.Ponzi scheme operators, explains lawyer Lalaine Monserate of the Securities and Exchange Commission, pay exceptional returns to investors coming from the deposits of “a growing number of investors.”
Generally, an investor can receive seven post-dated checks, said Monserate of the SEC compliance and enforcement division.
Suspected Ponzi companies get helped by agents or counselors, either an individual or a corporation, who will recruit as many investors, she explained.
The company or individual agent then gets the deposit of its first investor, who tells others of this “good investment opportunity” and who also receives an interest income.
A second one comes in, gives his or her investment, and also earns from the interest.
The first investor is then paid by the agent her or his next interest income as a result of the money from the second investor.
When a third investor comes in, gives his or her money, and earns interest income from it, the second and first investors also get their next interest incomes. The cycle then continues (see diagrams A, B, C and D).

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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.

For full story, visit: www.ofwjournalism.net

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.”

For full story visit: http://www.ofwjournalism.net

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)