Lower process fees for OFWs

Overseas Filipino workers (OFW) could now expect lower process fees for their overseas employment certificate (OEC) after the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) implemented a new collection policy in its foreign posts.

POEA administrator Hans Cacdac said in a phone interview that under the new advisory, which will be effective immediately, the new process fees collected from vacationing OFWs will be much closer to its P100 processing rate for OEC.

OECs are among the documentary requirements from the government before it allows the deployment of an OFW.

“We have already issued advisories to all our labor attaches abroad to adopt immediately the current market value of P100 in their areas of jurisdiction instead of the previous fixed rate,” Cacdac said.

He also said that the POEA is now conducting a full review on the guidelines covering vacationing OFWs to address these kinds of issues.

Cacdac made the statement after the Commission on Audit earlier issued a report, which claimed POEA overcharged vacationing OFWs from 27 countries by about P13 million for processing fee last 2010.

But Labor Undersecretary Danilo Cruz denied this in a separate interview saying that the Philippine Embassy, which used to collect the processing fees for POEA, did not overcharge OFWs and were only following the government’s previous fixed rate policy.

“It will be difficult for the embassies to base the fees from the daily bank rate (since it usually changes abruptly). So they used to set a fixed collection rate, which is usually higher than the usual bank rate,” Cruz said.

By SAMUEL MEDENILLA

mb.com.ph

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