Many OFW dream houses in ‘Little Italy’ still empty

MABINI, BATANGAS—Mediterranean-inspired, pastel-colored houses dot the coast and hills of this rural town in Batangas province, dwarfing their traditional counterparts made of unpainted concrete blocks under roofs of corrugated zinc.

The larger houses, many of them empty, belong to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who plan to return here one day.

Despite their absence, the OFWs have contributed money to help build roads, schools, water grids and other infrastructure usually handled by local governments. They pay for annual fiestas that were traditionally financed by municipalities, churches and local businesses.

Thanks to OFWs, Mabini became a “first-class” municipality last year in a government ranking of towns nationwide, leaping from just a “third-class” town.

In one barangay nicknamed Little Italy, where a quarter of the 1,200 residents are working in Italy, the OFWs shouldered 20 percent of the cost to construct a public hall.

“We couldn’t have finished it without the OFWs,” the barangay chair, Raymundo Magsino, 64, said in an interview inside the building.

OFW remittances, which the government says have been steadily rising sharply from $7.6 billion in 2003 to $17.3 billion in 2009, now account for more than 10 percent of the Philippine gross domestic product. The remittances are also the main factor driving the country’s recent economic growth, which would have otherwise remained stagnant.

OFWs, who typically work as maids, nurses or service workers abroad, began going abroad in large numbers in the 1980s.

Unhealthy dependence

But critics, including many OFWs, say the government has developed an unhealthy dependence on the remittances, turning a blind eye to their social costs, especially divided families and the reliance on them to pay for services while failing to build a sound economy that produces good jobs at home.

About 15 percent of the 42,000 residents of Mabini, about 130 kilometers south of Manila, live overseas, compared with an estimated national average of 10 percent.

One recent morning, Jocelyn Santia, 40, was packing her bags after two months of vacation here to return to her job as a housekeeper in Milan. She and her husband, who died six years ago, began working in Italy 20 years ago after they were recruited by an employment agency.

Santia’s grandparents and a brother raised her four children here, though the two eldest now attend college in Italy. Her sacrifice, she hoped, would yield good, white-collar jobs for her children.

Bitter about leaving

But with her departure—and yet another separation from her two younger children—looming before her, Santia expressed bitterness about having to leave her family.

“The economy is bad here, salaries are low,” she said. “It’s the fault of the government that so many Filipinos have to go abroad. If there were good jobs here, why would we ever think of going abroad?”

Mabini Mayor Nilo Villanueva said he had often heard this criticism from OFWs. Villanueva was elected in 2007 by campaigning in Italy and championing the interests of the overseas workers. The mayor connected Little Italy to the water grid last year.

Yet, even as Villanueva has sought OFW investments in a feed mill and other projects, the mayor said he worried about the town’s and country’s reliance on remittances. “Many people have become lazy now because they are overdependent on remittances,” he said.

Villanueva said the town not only counted on investment from its OFWs, but also had become dependent on their earnings in less direct ways.

School for OFW kids

Most OFWs here, for example, send their children to private elementary schools, which have smaller class sizes and offer richer educational and extracurricular programs.

“They are helping the municipal government because we are spending less on public schools,” Villanueva said.

At Santa Fe Integrated School, a private institution that charges an annual tuition of P16,354 ($370), about 80 percent of the 250 students are children of OFWs. About half of the students have both parents overseas and are being raised by relatives or housekeepers, said Louella D. de Leon, the principal.

Kate Michele Mendoza, 12, and her sister Christina, 8, are typical cases. With their parents working in Italy since Kate’s birth, both she and her sister live with their grandparents and two cousins, whose parents work in Oman. The parents return here once a year, staying one to two months.

“We go malling when they are here,” Kate said.

‘They are arrogant’

De Leon said that while the children of overseas workers were better off financially, they lacked discipline and scored poorer grades than the children whose parents were present.

“The kids of OFWs have everything in terms of gadgets—the latest cell phones that you can’t even find in Manila—and they have bigger allowances than even the teachers,” De Leon said. “But they have an attitude. They are arrogant.”

“I don’t understand their parents,” the principal added. “They are working as maids in Italy and they hire maids here to take care of their own children. They value their money more than their families.”

The national government has highlighted the positive effects of the OFW economy, calling the workers “heroes” and presenting awards for the model OFW family of the year.

Benefits outweigh costs

In an interview in Manila, Vivian F. Tornea, a director at the Department of Labor and Employment’s Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, said the benefits of the remittance economy far outweighed the costs.

Tornea denied that the national and local governments had become dependent on remittances, saying that OFW contributions to building public infrastructure were simply “payback” because they did not pay income taxes.

“Just as we get assistance from other funding institutions, why can’t we accept from our own nationals who are willing and capable of giving something for their own community?” she asked.

While the government has welcomed OFW remittances, it has done too little to ensure their long-term financial health, critics say.

Atikha, a private organization, provides financial literacy programs for OFWs in Mabini and elsewhere, who tend to invest in houses and vehicles that remain unused for years.

Debts incurred abroad

Ella Cristina Gloriane, a personal finance adviser at Atikha, said OFWs workers often incurred debts overseas to build their dream houses here.

“That’s one reason many of them can’t come home,” she said. “They have to keep working to repay their debts.”

In the Pulong Lupa neighborhood, about half of the houses belong to absent OFWs. No one answered the doorbell at several houses, but a caretaker, Jovel Bonapos, 16, appeared at the gate of a large pink house.

The house, Bonapos said, belonged to a couple and their four children living in Italy. They visited only once every two years, staying up to two months each time.

The house had four bedrooms and three bathrooms, and it is “completely furnished,” he said.

In a large house not too far away, Lorena Sawali-Baquillos, 37, lives with her three children while her husband works as a seaman.

Motivation

Baquillos, who leads a small organization of OFW families, said she understood the motivation behind building the Italian-style houses.

“Filipinos are stuck on status symbols,” she said. “After the sweat and tears of working in Europe for many years, they build a big house to show the fruits of their labor.”

“But it’s weird,” she added.

“How can you enjoy your house if you can only see it in photos? The houses have huge beds, even though they may use them only a few weeks a year. They’re fully furnished with plasma televisions and ovens, but there’s no one to bake a cake.” New York Times News Service/Philippine Daily Inquirer, September 20, 2010