NEWS RELEASE - 9 February 2004

Reference: Connie Bragas-Regalado,
Chairperson and Number 1 Nominee
Contact No.: (0063) 927-215 7392

OFW absentee voters and their families should put all Presidential aspirants through the “MIGRANTE Test”, announced a party list group of OFWs, returned migrants and their families during a rally at Mendiola Bridge this afternoon.

“We want to make sure that the next President genuinely works to protect and promote the rights of all OFWs and their families. By putting them through the MIGRANTE test, voters will know if the Presidential candidate will be good for OFWs or not,” said Connie Bragas-Regalado, Migrante Party List Chairperson and 1st Nominee.

Bragas-Regalado said the MIGRANTE Test outlines the OFWs’ criteria for an aspiring President.

“These are the things a Presidential candidate should commit to when seeking the votes of around one million absentee voters and their families,” said Bragas-Regalado, noting that the one million votes include the 370,000 registered absentee voters multiplied by three to refer to relatives who are voters in the Philippines.

Also at the rally, Bragas-Regalado presented an OFW Performance Rating Card that measured how well President Gloria did for OFWs under her administration.

“President Gloria’s performance was dismal and because of that, we’re not surprised that our members are fed up with her,” she added.

GMA Failed the MIGRANTE Test. Click picture to zoom.

For its part, an alliance of overseas Filipino groups declared they already put President Gloria through the MIGRANTE Test and she failed miserably.

“But unlike a test at school where a failing grade penalizes only the student – in our case, Gloria’s failure translate into misery for countless OFWs,” said Migrante International Secretary-General Maita Santiago.

“Under President Gloria, the OWWA blatantly discriminates against documented and undocumented OFWs. This is atrocious. When migrants send dollars home, does OWWA or President Gloria ask if the dollars are from undocumented workers or not before they channel the remittances into government coffers?” said Santiago.

“We also can’t imagine how President Gloria can proclaim to protect the rights and welfare of OFWs when the national budget doesn’t devote a single cent to OWWA – which is the entity mandated to provide welfare assistance and benefits to OFWs,” she said, noting that OWWA is a P6 billion trust fund made up of the US$25 that OFWs contribute as their mandatory membership fee.

Even worse, Santiago said that President Gloria has already taken P620 million from OFWs for her election campaign. The P520 million is the amount already transferred from the OWWA Medicare Fund to PhilHealth while P100 million was recently transferred from OWWA’s Livelihood Assitance Program and put into the Office of the National President’s livelihood fund.

“For these reasons and a long list of many other sins President Gloria has committed against OFWs and their families, our call for this May is, ‘OFWs at Pamilya, Ibasura si Gloria’,” declared Santiago, adding that the “Junk Gloria” call reverberate across at least 22 countries, including Hong Kong Saudi Arabia, the US, Japan and South Korea, where they have member organizations. #