Kin of OFW returns GMA award

ABS-CBN, Tuesday 29 June 2004 10:59 PM

Fed-up over the OWWA's denial of assistance to OFW Joyce Alon-Alon, Joyce's brother Albert, in protest returned to the OWWA and the Arroyo administration his sister's PGMA Award on Science and Technology she received from the PUP when she graduated at the top of her class last year.

Speaking before the Kamiyan led rally in front of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration on Tuesday morning, Albert Alon-Alon castigated the agency for turning a blind eye on her sister Joyce.

We might as well return this PGMA Award that was granted to Joyce, because it is the same President and her administration that is now turning their backs on my sister now that she needs their help the most. Sa inyo na ito! he said.

Albert said that everyday, his family shells out almost a thousand pesos daily for Joyce's medications and his father's meager income as a tricycle driver is not enough to cover it.

Joyce Alon-Alon, 22, is the OFW who returned in the country on May 28, mentally ill. And with almost a month of confinement at the Philippine General Hospital psychiatry ward, no assistance has been extended to Joyce by the OWWA and the Arroyo government.

According to OWWA Administrator Virgilio Angelo during a recent dialogue with the Kamiyan, Joyce is not covered and not within the scope of the OWWA Medicare.

During the rally, the Kabataan ng Migranteng Pilipino para sa Bayan (Kamiyan) an organization of OFW dependants said that Joyce is only one of the countless OFWs directly hit by the Arroyo administration's alleged anti-migrant OWWA Omnibus Policies.

As a result of the OWWA Omnibus policies, countless OFWs were stripped of their rights to their hard-earned contributions at the OWWA and President Arroyo who is set to be inaugurated tomorrow [June 30] with the help of her cohorts at dole and OWWA are the brains behind this evil scheme, said Mac Ramirez, the groups's deputy secretary general.

The OWWA Omnibus Policies was approved by the agency's board of trustees on September 19, 2003. Since then, needy OFWs and their families can no longer turn to OWWA for help, the group said.

These policies conveniently erased the government's responsibility to protect the rights and welfare of migrant workers and their families and passed this responsibility to the shoulder of migrant workers themselves, the association said in a statement.

President Arroyo is foremost to blame for the wholesale betrayal of OFWs and their families' welfare. And as she swears in tomorrow, OFWs will be doomed for the next six years, Ramirez said.

Ramirez said that Mrs. Arroyo won only because of plundering OFW's fund and alleged massive electoral fraud and violence, thus she has no mandate to govern the country.