2004 NSO Survey on Overseas Filipinos

MANILA – THE money that overseas contract workers sent through banks and informal channels increased during the last four years, data from an annual Survey of Overseas Filipinos (SOF) by the National Statistics Office (NSO) revealed.

Four-year data from the SOF, including the 2004 survey that was released last April 15, showed that an estimated 661,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) remitted PhP38.109 billion through banks while the volume of money flowing through courier services has also been increasing.

MANILA — MARITIME groups are objecting to proposed new maritime courses for marine officers, saying seafarers will be separated from their families during what would normally be their time off between contracts, in addition to the added economic burden of paying for these courses.

“Government must do everything not to make things difficult” for seafarers, a leader of a Filipino merchant marine officers’ group told the OFW Journalism Consortium.

PASAY CITY – FOR overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from the city, the airport leads to home. But for those from provinces, the airport and the city are like foreign countries, where there’s no place called home.

Partly to solve that lack of lodging house for temporarily stranded and distressed OFWs, the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration (OWWA) inaugurated “Halfway Home” last April 18 at the OWWA Building in F.B Harrison Street, Pasay City.

ENGR. Rafael T. David, former chair of the Filipino Community in Yanbu (FILCOYAN) in the western region of Saudi Arabia, joined Our Creator last April 24. He was 58.

Among advocates of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Kingdom, David is renowned to be helping countless numbers of distressed OFWs, many of them domestic workers. David is also a recipient of the Bayaning Pilipino Awards given by ABS-CBN Channel 2 and the UGAT Foundation.

MANILA — RECRUITMENT agencies deploying Filipina entertainers to Japan are launching a “last-ditch effort” to regain access to the Japanese labor market that has been restricted by new immigration rules that went into effect March 15.

“We have to take the initiative because our government has given up on us,” president of the Philippine Association of Recruitment Agencies Deploying Artists (PARADA) Lorenzo Langomez said during the group’s general membership meeting March 15.