WHAT FUTURE AWAITS NORTH COTABATO’S OFWs?

The Overseas Filipino Workers have long been called the unsung heroes of the country bringing in billions of pesos every year to prop up the Philippine economy.

But do people really know what these unsung heroes go through just to send home those dollars?

In my many travels around the world, I have seen many of these heroes in the airports, some of them seemingly lost, crying as they leave behind loved ones and not knowing what fate awaits them in their new work places.

There are stories of unexpected successes, like the Filipina caregiver who inherited the fortune of an old woman she was took care of.

But these dramatic stories are very rare.

What is common are the heart-rending stories of maltreatment by their employers and broken families.

The saddest thing is that, except for the very few who wisely invest their earnings, many of these workers come home empty handed after spending lonely years of working abroad.

As I prepare to present to the people of North Cotabato the innovations in governance that they could expect under my leadership, I have started working on a blueprint of a program that would look into the well-being of the OFWs of North Cotabato and how they would be able to assure themselves of a more secure future while at the same time helping the economy of the province.

Following the concept of the Cotabato Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the North Cotabato Farmers’ Pension Fund, I am now drafting a program called North Cotabato Overseas Workers Agricultural Investments Corporation.

The idea is:

Organize the North Cotabato OFWs and help them form a cooperative or corporation to be managed by a professional management team;
Ask the members to put up their capitalization in the cooperative or corporation. As members of the group, the OFWs and their dependents will automatically be covered by the Cotabato Health Insurance Program.
For every peso put in by the OFWs, the Provincial Government of North Cotabato would put up twice the amount as a loan to the cooperative or corporation;

4.Organized and supported by the Provincial Government, the OFWs cooperative/corporation could access funds from Land Bank or other GFIs;

Investment areas could include Oil Palm Plantation or Rubber Plantation in the wide Ancestral Domain areas in partnership with our Tribal Groups or even an Oil Palm Processing Mill which the province badly needs.
This endeavor is expected to ensure that our OFWs in North Cotabato have something to look forward to while at the same time helping the economy of the province by providing jobs for the local people.

To give our OFWs an idea of how big this project could be, let me share with you that information that at an average gross earnings of P150,000 per hectare per year, a 1,000 could make a gross income of P150 million every year for the next 30 years.

Aside from that, for every 1,000 hectares developed at least 300 people are given jobs while the Tribal Communities who own the land benefit from the project as partners of our OFWs.

This program could make our OFWs the biggest investors in the province. With that, we could look forward to the day when our young people do not have to travel abroad anymore to find a job and earn.

An estimated 50,000 hectares of Ancestral Domains have remained undeveloped and are not planted to anything.

This blueprint will still undergo thorough review and improvement but I believe the very basic idea of ensuring the future of our OFWs and opening jobs to perk up the local economy is something that should be pursued if only to honor these unsung heroes of the country. (Photo Caption: A group of North Cotabato OFWs pose with my family in our hotel room in Singapore.)