
Overseas employment
LIKE the sunshine tourist industry, the highly-successful overseas employment program remains a major pillar of the Philippine economy.
Thus, we cannot overemphasize the importance of fine-tuning the program considering the many problems confronting migrant workers.
These problems include the continued presence of illegal job recruiters, both local and foreign, and abusive foreign employers.
The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) has warned overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to be cautious of “third country recruitment.”
These highly-enterprising illegal recruiters, many of them syndicate members, use the internet to victimize Filipino jobseekers.
BMW issued the warning following the recent arrest of several Filipinos in Nigeria, who were allegedly involved in cybercrime and economic sabotage.
Reports said these Filipinos were recruited to travel from Dubai, United Arab Emiratres (UAE), using tourist visas.
They were led to believe that their (work) permits would be processed upon their arrival in Nigeria, the reports added.
The DMW, however, explained that Nigeria does not allow the conversion of tourist visas for employment purposes.