Diaspora Affairs Principal Secretary Roseline Njogu is on a work-study tour to the Philippines to experience first-hand how they promote and protect the welfare and rights of migrant workers abroad.
PS Njogu on Tuesday visited the Department of Migrant Workers, the Philippine Government’s executive entity tasked to protect the rights and promote the welfare of overseas Filipino workers.
The Philippines is among the countries with the highest number of Diaspora in the world, after India, Mexico, and China.
These large numbers of the Diaspora have necessitated the country to refine its management and administration of the diaspora and Migrant labour, including the institutionalization of the same in the national government departments.
Philippine has taken steps to engage directly with the governments in the Gulf region to protect its nationals working there, a challenge Kenya continues to deal with.
Such an intervention is an amendment of the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 through the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration in a bid to improve the standard of protection and promotion of the welfare of migrant workers, their families and overseas Filipinos in distress.
In January 2018, former President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to ban labour migration to the Middle East due to abuse of Filipinos abroad. In May last year, Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro L. Locsin Jr lauded the labour reforms in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia that protect Filipinos and encouraged other countries to follow suit.
According to Philippines News Agency, the country collaborated with Bahrain in 2018 to provide flexible pathways to migration, leading to the issuance of flexible visas that regularized more than a thousand undocumented Filipinos. The government also invested some $1.5 million to purchase flexi-visas for over a thousand Filipino migrant workers.
In a statement, the State Department of Diaspora Affairs said Philippines is the most ideal nation to learn best practices from, as well as tactics to overcome challenges in managing the diaspora and migrant workers as well as labour mobility bottlenecks.
PS Njogu’s-led Kenyan delegation was received at the DMW offices by Patricia Yvonne M.Caucan- Undersecretary for Policy and International Cooperation, Benard P. Olalia – Under Secretary for Licensing and Adjudication, Venecio V.Legaspi, Assistant Secretary National Reintegration Center for OFWs and Mario T. Zinampan Assistant Secretary, Policy and International Corporation.
She will meet Kenyans living in Philippines in Manila on Thursday.
The PS, who is scheduled to visit various government institutions during the tour, was accompanied by Diaspora Affairs and Migrant Workers Parliamentary Committee chairperson Lydia Haika Mnene, officers from the Ministry of Foreign and Diaspora Affairs and the Kenya Embassy in Jakarta, Indonesia.
