Groups and migrant workers advocates, led by Migrante International, stage a prayer rally in front of the Department of Foreign Affairs on September 5, 2022. Photo taken by Kaycee Valmonte.
186 groups write to ask for Mary Jane Veloso's release for Women Emancipation Day
Celia Veloso, mother of detained Filipino Mary Jane Veloso, is asking Indonsia's Minister of Women and Empowerment and Child Protection Gusti Ayu Bintang Darmawati to finally free her daughter after over a decade of detention.
Nearly 200 organizations from the Philippines and abroad penned a separate request to free Veloso. The request comes ahead of Indonesia’s Women Emancipation Day on April 21.
"As a mother, it is very painful for me to see my daughter in jail when she did nothing wrong," her mother wrote. "My daughter has suffered for a wrong she has not committed."Veloso has been behind bars for over a decade now but hopes for her release sparked after Indonesian President Joko Widodo granted clemency to a woman on death row for similar drug smuggling charges.
'Ambulance chasing', decarbonization can still rock the boat for Filipino seafarers
Keeping more Filipinos employed on the world's ships will need more than reforms to maritime education and training programs, industry leaders said, adding Filipino seafarers face more challenges as global shipping changes.
These include global changes to the supply chain to lower the shipping industry's carbon emissions and the issue of "ambulance chasing" — a term used for lawyers who persuade workers injured on the job to seek monetary damages — that can drive shipping companies to seek sailors elsewhere.
While workers deserve compensation for work-related injuries, the shipping industry sees "ambulance chasers" as seeking large settlements for even minor injuries.
Edinel Magtibay-Dearden on her first day as Executive Producer of SBS Filipino on March 9, 2023, a one-hour daily program at Australia-based SBS. Photo taken by Kaycee Valmonte.
SBS Filipino, telling stories for and of Australia’s fifth largest migrant community
In Australia, a radio program aims to update its Filipino diaspora with stories from back home and from the 400,000-strong Filipino community through a one-hour radio program.
SBS Filipino is one of the programs of the mostly government-funded Special Broadcasting Service whose audience is Australia’s fifth largest migrant community, which airs daily with radio newscasts and packages in Filipino.
"With SBS Filipino, we continue to serve our kababayans," SBS Filipino executive producer Edinel Magtibay-Dearden told visiting Filipino journalists in their Sydney studio.
Dealing with ‘double burden’: The guilt migrant domestic workers carry
Alone in a new country, deprived of the familiar protection of family and friends, migrant women workers face unique challenges that many of them also feel guilty for.
For some, leaving home means going to a foreign place to take care of another family.
UN Women noted that women migrant workers are more vulnerable to violence, trafficking, and even discrimination. This is aside from carrying the “guilt” of leaving your family.“It’s necessary to raise awareness about the issues of women [because it] will also provide a space for women migrants understand that these things that are happening is not their fault,” GABRIELA Hong Kong Chairperson Shiela Tebia-Bonifacio said, adding that many of the problems surface because of the patriarchal society — where men and their needs carry more weight — we live in.
No shortage of nurses but low pay, lack of tenure driving them abroad
While it is not new for nurses in the Philipines opting to go abroad in search of better opportunities, this time, the wave of resignations comes just as the country is anticipating another surge in COVID-19 infections.
Amid regular work and experiencing burnout from their shifts due to the pandemic, some nurses are taking advantage of the reopening of economies abroad and the laxing of border restrictions to look for employment overseas.
"[It’s] because of the lack of opportunities in our country," said Dr. Anthony Leachon, former adviser to the country’s pandemic task force.
"They are overworked, they’re overburdened but less appreciated and of course, they seem undervalued. And there’s a discrepancy between the payments of private hospitals and the public hospitals," Leachon added in a mix of English and Filipino.