Grateful owner gives her can of cookies
By Blanche Rivera
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: May 31, 2009
HONG KONG—Every night in Yuen Long, a far-off area in the New Territories, she rummages through garbage bins for soda cans, cardboard boxes, and other recyclables that can earn her HK$38 (P228) on a nice day.
Poverty drove Mildred Perez, 38-year-old Filipina, like 126,000 other Filipinos here, to come and work in Hong Kong as a helper, leaving behind her two children in Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya.
But her dream to build a decent life for her family was crushed when her employer, a pastor, sexually assaulted her in 2007. She lost her job, and being a complainant in a pending court case, is barred by Hong Kong laws to take up employment.
She has since been unable to support her family, so her children were forced to drop out of school. There are days when her life, it seemed to her, was useless.
But on April 29, Perez found something that could have ended her misfortunes.
After renewing her visa at the immigration department, she noticed a thick packet just slightly bigger than an airmail envelope, in a trash bin on the corner of Pottinger Street and Des Voeux Road.
Cash and checks
Perez picked it up and handed it to her companion, a man identified only as David, who opened the packet. Inside were cash and checks amounting to HK$350,545 (P2.1 million).
There was $176,000 in cash (in denomination of $1,000) and four checks: one for US$13,000, another for US$5,000, a third for US$3,250, and another for HK$10,920.
One of the checks was clipped to the envelope, she said.
Instinctively, they called the Hong Kong Information Centre to get the number of the company indicated in the documents. Because it was past office hours, they just left a message on a recorder, saying they found the money and wished to return it to the owner.
“Of course, I couldn’t sleep. It’s money. That would have allowed me to go home. But I was thinking, who left the money? What if he is just another worker? He would lose his job. How many people depend on him? I couldn’t keep it. My conscience would have bothered me no end if I did otherwise,” Perez said.
The lost envelope
That person, it turned out, was Kitty (Perez did not get the full name—Ed.), an ordinary employee tasked by her company to deposit the money in the bank.
Kitty said she realized she had lost the envelope around 2 p.m. on April 29.
At noon on April 30, Kitty and her superior Yvonne Tsang met Perez and David at Fairwood in Tin Shui Wai for the handover.
Philippine Overseas Labor Office officials, who got wind of Perez’s exceptional deed through Perez’s friend Merly Bunda, had wanted the turnover to be done at the Philippine Consulate for proper documentation, but Perez acceded to the company’s request to have it at its premises.
Token of gratitude
“Sobrang pasasalamat nila (They were very grateful,” Perez said, adding that David even told the company officials that the Filipina was jobless and would never have that amount of money even if she found work again as domestic helper.
Tsang and Kitty gave Perez a can of butter cookies as a token of gratitude, and Perez quietly resumed her life.
She is now back to collecting scraps and now, venturing into the buy-and-sell of used clothing because she constantly needs money to extend her visa until her case is resolved.
Her case, which has yet to be scheduled for its first hearing, has not progressed, and this prevents the Filipina from being employed or returning to the Philippines to be with her family.
High cost of living
“It’s been a long time. Nothing is happening. Do they think it’s that easy to rummage through the garbage bins? Sometimes, I wanted to give up,” she said, breaking down at the thought of her two kids having to postpone college because she could not support them.
Perez is also saving up for the HK$3,000 cost of a minor surgery she needs to remove a growing clump of flesh on her head.
She does not know when she can attend to this, as coming up with the HK$160 visa renewal fee alone every few weeks is a challenge.
Last month, Perez could hardly pay the fees to renew her passport at the Philippine Consulate and she almost did not renew her visa on May 20, if not for friends and strangers who pooled their own meager resources to help a fellow Filipina.
But even in these times, the Filipina refuses to contemplate how much better off she would have been had she decided not to return the money.
Strict, honest father
The cash alone in that envelope was equivalent to P1 million, a considerable wealth in her hometown in the village of Aliaga, in Bambang, Nueva Vizcaya, where her family, though poor, strives to live with integrity.
Perez’s father, a local official in their barangay, can be credited with Perez’s inherent honesty. He was very strict when it came to his children taking or even accepting anything that is not theirs.
In her second grade, Perez recalled how she and her friends took labong, a cheap vegetable shoot, from a neighbor’s yard to use for playing inside the house. When her father learned of her indiscretion from the neighbor, he put her inside a sack and reprimanded her terribly.
The lesson stuck
“Mari ayon mangmangya nu mariyon tonah (If it does not belong to you, don’t take it),” she said in her local dialect Isinay.
She has kept true to this, even if it means she has to keep digging trash to survive.
Monday, June 1, 2009
OFW remittances boost hometown development
By Doris Dumlao
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: May 29, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—Who said remittances from overseas Filipino workers would plunge drastically due to the global financial crisis?
Today, more and more OFWs, aside from regularly sending money back home to their families, tend to band together to raise funds to help develop their hometowns.
The agricultural town of Pozorrubio in Pangasinan province, for instance, was cited in a recent study commissioned by leading global money transfer company Western Union as an example of a new phenomenon called “collective remittance.”
Because of the huge development potential of such inflows, especially in the Philippines which is one of the world’s largest recipients of remittances, Western Union said it planned to pilot-test in the country a project aimed at ramping up collective remittances.
“Migrant worker remittances are mainly family to family paying for basic necessities. But if remittances are pooled and invested in creating economic opportunities for the whole community, the impact would be greater,” said Western Union vice president Angela Heng, who was in Manila Thursday to host a one-day conference on collective remittance.
Ahead of the meet, Western Union commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to conduct a study on communal or collective remittances in different parts of the world, their impact, and what could be done to make them more effective.
Pozorrubio, which has about 10 percent of its population working overseas, was cited in the study for having a local government that was able to encourage its overseas residents to make collective remittances to support local public works projects.
Bright lights
Since 1986, town officials have been visiting Pozorrubians in California, Chicago, Hawaii, New York, Washington and Hong Kong to encourage them to form themselves into solidarity groups, elect officers, and identify projects and programs in their hometown that they could support monetarily.
“For example, Pozorrubio had no street lights, but after the mayor encouraged the migrant workers’ families to put up lampposts in front of their homes, the whole town lit up,” the EIU study said.
As the Pozzorubian migrants became better organized, the study said the local government began encouraging them to hand their donations directly to the beneficiaries, and invited them to return home to see for themselves the impact their remittances were having.
“Return migration was the theme of the 2002 town fiesta,” the study said.
It said Pozorrubian migrant communities were able to finance the construction of a park and library, and refurbish a high school’s English learning center.
The community hospital received an electrocardiograph, computer, stethoscopes, toilet, septic tank, window screens, electric fans, beddings and medicines.
On top of these, the hospital is visited annually by locally born doctors who perform medical missions.
Multiplier effect
“The multiplier effect of these remittances has been enormous. By 2001, this rural town of 56,000 had Internet cafés, car rental services for visiting migrants, video rental shops, and a rural bank with over $2 million in deposits and only a few borrowers,” the study said.
It also built 12 public and private irrigation facilities, 50 manufacturing establishments, six big private housing subdivisions and 32 day-care centers.
Different strokes
“This level of development is almost never seen in rural Philippines, even in the larger municipalities. Moreover, the town’s tax collection is one of the highest in the region, with most of the revenue coming from the busy public market,” the study said.
The EIU said other LGUs had taken different approaches to encourage their migrant populations to invest in local enterprises.
“The most visible example is the province of Bohol which set up an investment center and enacted a local investment code to assist investors in identifying, organizing and matching their resources with local partners,” it said.
The Island Garden City of Samal, near Davao City, passed a similar code geared toward developing local tourism, it noted.
Another area where migrants make collective remittances is charity.
Cited as an example was the Filipino community in South Puget Sound in Washington state which raised more than $200,000 that it remitted to a foundation in Bislig City in Surigao del Sur to finance rehabilitation and livelihood projects.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: May 29, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—Who said remittances from overseas Filipino workers would plunge drastically due to the global financial crisis?
Today, more and more OFWs, aside from regularly sending money back home to their families, tend to band together to raise funds to help develop their hometowns.
The agricultural town of Pozorrubio in Pangasinan province, for instance, was cited in a recent study commissioned by leading global money transfer company Western Union as an example of a new phenomenon called “collective remittance.”
Because of the huge development potential of such inflows, especially in the Philippines which is one of the world’s largest recipients of remittances, Western Union said it planned to pilot-test in the country a project aimed at ramping up collective remittances.
“Migrant worker remittances are mainly family to family paying for basic necessities. But if remittances are pooled and invested in creating economic opportunities for the whole community, the impact would be greater,” said Western Union vice president Angela Heng, who was in Manila Thursday to host a one-day conference on collective remittance.
Ahead of the meet, Western Union commissioned the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) to conduct a study on communal or collective remittances in different parts of the world, their impact, and what could be done to make them more effective.
Pozorrubio, which has about 10 percent of its population working overseas, was cited in the study for having a local government that was able to encourage its overseas residents to make collective remittances to support local public works projects.
Bright lights
Since 1986, town officials have been visiting Pozorrubians in California, Chicago, Hawaii, New York, Washington and Hong Kong to encourage them to form themselves into solidarity groups, elect officers, and identify projects and programs in their hometown that they could support monetarily.
“For example, Pozorrubio had no street lights, but after the mayor encouraged the migrant workers’ families to put up lampposts in front of their homes, the whole town lit up,” the EIU study said.
As the Pozzorubian migrants became better organized, the study said the local government began encouraging them to hand their donations directly to the beneficiaries, and invited them to return home to see for themselves the impact their remittances were having.
“Return migration was the theme of the 2002 town fiesta,” the study said.
It said Pozorrubian migrant communities were able to finance the construction of a park and library, and refurbish a high school’s English learning center.
The community hospital received an electrocardiograph, computer, stethoscopes, toilet, septic tank, window screens, electric fans, beddings and medicines.
On top of these, the hospital is visited annually by locally born doctors who perform medical missions.
Multiplier effect
“The multiplier effect of these remittances has been enormous. By 2001, this rural town of 56,000 had Internet cafés, car rental services for visiting migrants, video rental shops, and a rural bank with over $2 million in deposits and only a few borrowers,” the study said.
It also built 12 public and private irrigation facilities, 50 manufacturing establishments, six big private housing subdivisions and 32 day-care centers.
Different strokes
“This level of development is almost never seen in rural Philippines, even in the larger municipalities. Moreover, the town’s tax collection is one of the highest in the region, with most of the revenue coming from the busy public market,” the study said.
The EIU said other LGUs had taken different approaches to encourage their migrant populations to invest in local enterprises.
“The most visible example is the province of Bohol which set up an investment center and enacted a local investment code to assist investors in identifying, organizing and matching their resources with local partners,” it said.
The Island Garden City of Samal, near Davao City, passed a similar code geared toward developing local tourism, it noted.
Another area where migrants make collective remittances is charity.
Cited as an example was the Filipino community in South Puget Sound in Washington state which raised more than $200,000 that it remitted to a foundation in Bislig City in Surigao del Sur to finance rehabilitation and livelihood projects.
What happened to Filipino drivers in Dubai?
INQUIRER.net
Posted date: June 01, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—It’s been almost two months since the story of Filipino drivers stranded in Dubai attracted the attention of government and non-government organizations. But what has happened to them?
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs, citing a report by the consulate general in Dubai, most of the remaining Filipino drivers in Ajman, United Arab Emirates who were duped by CYM International Services for non-existent jobs have been offered employment by Emirates Flight Catering and Dubai’s Road and Transportation Agency.
In his report to Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, Philippine Consul General in Dubai Benito Valeriano said 62 others are still in Dubai waiting for the processing of their employment papers and the payment of their overstaying penalties.
The Philippine government has pressed on Al Toomoh Technical Services, the counterpart of CYM International Services in Dubai, to shoulder the payment of these penalties.
“Their employment papers could not be processed because the penalties for overstaying need to be paid. They came in various dates from January until March using visit visas, the validity of which have already expired. Al Toomoh Agency management has stated that it would pay for these penalties,” Valeriano said.
The consulate general said Vice Consul Edwin Gil Mendoza and welfare officer Elmer Joven recently visited the Filipino workers to check on their condition and employment status.
He said another eight have started working for Quality Mix, and another eight were offered work by the same company.
Valeriano said 14 Filipino drivers have opted to return to Manila.
Earlier, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo directed the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the DFA to look for alterative jobs for the stranded drivers as a humanitarian gesture.
At the same time, the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency has already filed charges against CYM International Services for violating labor deployment laws and regulations.
Posted date: June 01, 2009
MANILA, Philippines—It’s been almost two months since the story of Filipino drivers stranded in Dubai attracted the attention of government and non-government organizations. But what has happened to them?
According to the Department of Foreign Affairs, citing a report by the consulate general in Dubai, most of the remaining Filipino drivers in Ajman, United Arab Emirates who were duped by CYM International Services for non-existent jobs have been offered employment by Emirates Flight Catering and Dubai’s Road and Transportation Agency.
In his report to Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, Philippine Consul General in Dubai Benito Valeriano said 62 others are still in Dubai waiting for the processing of their employment papers and the payment of their overstaying penalties.
The Philippine government has pressed on Al Toomoh Technical Services, the counterpart of CYM International Services in Dubai, to shoulder the payment of these penalties.
“Their employment papers could not be processed because the penalties for overstaying need to be paid. They came in various dates from January until March using visit visas, the validity of which have already expired. Al Toomoh Agency management has stated that it would pay for these penalties,” Valeriano said.
The consulate general said Vice Consul Edwin Gil Mendoza and welfare officer Elmer Joven recently visited the Filipino workers to check on their condition and employment status.
He said another eight have started working for Quality Mix, and another eight were offered work by the same company.
Valeriano said 14 Filipino drivers have opted to return to Manila.
Earlier, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo directed the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) and the DFA to look for alterative jobs for the stranded drivers as a humanitarian gesture.
At the same time, the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency has already filed charges against CYM International Services for violating labor deployment laws and regulations.
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