Remittance growth no reason to discontinue dev’t assistance

MANILA — OFFICIAL development assistance (ODA) and migrant workers’ remittances are not an either-or situation, delegates to a United Nations Development Programme workshop on managing ODA recently said.

According to a World Bank report, ODA worldwide has been overrun by the pace of remittances from overseas workers. The WB-Global Development Finance Report (WB-GDF), which was released April 6 and which can be downloaded from the bank’s website, estimated that remittances to developing countries from overseas resident and nonresident workers in 2004 were in the neighborhood of $126 billion. Since 2001, the report added, remittances to developing countries have increased by $41 billion, or almost 50 percent.

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.