OFWs not to blame for unwittingly helping rampant
jueteng in the country

"Overseas Filipinos workers cannot be blamed if they fall into maximizing all avenues to save precious funds by sending their remittances via informal channels for their families to receive even just a little more from the difficult jobs we are in abroad."

Thus declared MIGRANTE Sectoral Party Chairperson Connie Bragas-Regalado in reaction to the Philippine Daily Inquirer report on jueteng lords are using OFWs to clean their dirty money.

Jueteng is a rampant illegal numbers game in the Philippines that government has atrociously failed to eliminate.

"Due to high money transfer fees charged by banks and door-to-door services such as Western Union at Philippine National Bank, OFWs wound tend to find informal channels for their remittances to the Philippines. If government would offer money transfers for OFWs without fees, no OFW would send their money through the jueteng point man system that does not charge any transmittal fees. This way, government has actually added jueteng lords to the exploiters of OFWs since they will also earn revenue aside from being able to 'clean' their dirty money," Bragas-Regalado said.

"Besides, OFWs would want an additional sack of rice or bag of groceries and food items for their families instead of paying high money transfer fees," she added.

Migrante cited the fees charged per transaction in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Italy as examples of the high money transfer fees via formal channels that OFWs have to shoulder:

"The Macapagal-Arroyo administration is to blame for the persistence of jueteng and for not giving us OFWs safe and free money transfer channels for remittances to our impoverished families. We only want our families to survive the raging economic crisis that forced us to work abroad," Bragas-Regalado concluded. #