The country’s biggest labor group, the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, has urged President Rodrigo Duterte to create a tripartite monitoring body to protect the Chinese and other foreigners legally working and living in the country.
“There must be a single tripartite board that will address and manage the issues surrounding foreign workers,” TUCP Party-list Rep. Raymond Mendoza said.
“These foreign workers give additional revenues to the government, open opportunities and create jobs, but no one seems to take overall responsibility in the face of the atrocities and other problems facing these foreign workers.”
To address these issues, Mendoza said, the TUCP was proposing a tripartite body that would directly report to the President, and which would be composed of government agencies, workers’ groups and private business groups coordinating with the foreign embassies.
The body would have a mandate to inspect and manage the multi-dimensional needs and growth potentials of the industry and its workers.
“Right now, no one is in charge of this new multi-billion-dollar industry because government agencies have limitations and are unable to go beyond their respective mandates,” Mendoza said.
“However, with this tripartite government, workers and business oversight body, the government must be able to fill the gaps and be able to carefully control these overlapping needs of the business and the workers.
“There also had been unresolved issues about illegal recruitment, illegal casinos, and POGOs, discrimination, kidnapping for ransom and ghettoization.
“And lately, there are reports about these workers posing as Chinese military men working in strategic areas. We have to address these issues and a tripartite body is needed to act as a filter clearinghouse for the growing industry.”
Mendoza said the government was at a loss on the number of legally and illegally working Chinese and other foreign workers actually staying in the country”•despite the different government agencies that issue different permits and various visas.