Overseas Filipino workers need help with personal financial management, says expert

Mariecar Jara-Puyod, Senior Reporter

The high social cost of migration diminishes if and when temporary and permanent migrant workers are encouraged and supported with financial literacy vehicles.

“We all understand that migration may primarily be done to improve the economic status or endeavours of an individual or family. It also requires the migrant to forego many aspects as payment for opportunity. Among these costs are losing a well-established social support network or what we call filial attachment; losing chances to provide guidance and support to imbibe discipline to children that parents leave behind (which may lead to substance abuse), early pregnancies, and crime; and the restructuring of the hierarchal authority in the family,” wrote retired Philippine government official Jennifer Gonzales.

Saying that the other end of the migration pendulum brings about brain gain especially so when migrants return for good to their homeland full of learnings and upscaling of skills, Gonzales also said the phenomenon, whether done domestically or trans-nationally, results in the capability of people to embrace multiculturalism as well as resocialisation or the learning of new norms and values.

The former Commission on Filipinos Overseas executive director was asked regarding the relationship between the high social cost of migration and financial literacy since on June 30, 2021, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released the third edition of the “ILO Global Estimates on International Migrant Workers: Results and Methodology.” The report implies that migrants have to be given sufficient support regarding financial literacy programmes as some and particularly a huge number of women migrants particularly in the low-end of work classifications are vulnerable to job insecurities such as lay-offs which “the COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus) has intensified.” Of the 169 million migrant workers around the world in 2019, 63.8 million were in Europe and Central Asia; 43.3 million, Americas; 24 million, Asia and the Pacific; and 13.7 million, Africa. Zeroing on the overseas Filipinos (OFs), their insecurities were spotted when Aries Martinez, a charge nurse at a COVID-19 facility in Doha, Qatar, guested at the “Mama Is Home” online platform Gonzales co-hosts with veteran journalist-turned PRULife UK financial/investments advisor Malou Talosig Bartolome.

Martinez said Filipino patients, a big number are breadwinners, as much as possible want to conceal their health problems and status from their families for fear they would worry a great deal.