Mediterranean-inspired, pastel-colored houses dot the coast and hills of this rural town in the Philippines, dwarfing their traditional counterparts made of unpainted concrete blocks under roofs of corrugated zinc. The larger houses, barely inhabited, many of them empty, belong to overseas workers who plan to return here one day.
Despite their absence, the workers have contributed money to help build roads, schools, water grids and other infrastructure usually handled by local governments. They pay for annual fiestas that were traditionally financed by municipalities, churches and local businesses. Thanks to their help, Mabini became a “first class” municipality last year in a government ranking of towns nationwide, leaping from “third class.”
In one village nicknamed Little Italy, where a quarter of the 1,200 residents are working in Italy, the overseas workers paid 20 percent of the cost to construct a public hall.
PHOTO: AFP
“We couldn’t have finished it without the OFWs,” the village head, Raymundo Magsino, 64, said in an interview inside the building, referring to “overseas Filipino workers.”
Remittances, which the government says have been rising sharply — from US$7.6 billion in 2003 to US$17.3 billion last year — now account for more than 10 percent of the Philippines’ GDP. The payments are also the main factor driving the country’s recent economic growth, which would have otherwise remained stagnant.
Filipinos, who typically work as maids, nurses or service workers abroad, began going overseas in large numbers in the 1980s.
However, critics, including many overseas workers, say the government has developed an unhealthy dependence on the remittances, turning a blind eye to their social costs, especially divided families and the reliance on them to pay for services while failing to build a sound economy that produces good jobs at home.
About 15 percent of the 42,000 residents of Mabini, about 129km south of Manila, live overseas, compared with an estimated national average of 10 percent.
One recent morning, Jocelyn Santia, 40, was packing her bags after two months of vacation here to return to her job as a housekeeper in Milan. She and her husband, who died six years ago, began working in Italy 20 years ago after being recruited by an employment agency.
Her grandparents and a brother raised her four children here, though the two eldest now attend college in Italy. Her sacrifice, she hoped, would yield good, white-collar jobs for her children. However, with her departure — and yet another separation from her two younger children — looming before her, she expressed bitterness about having to leave her family.
“The economy is bad here, salaries are low,” she said. “It’s the fault of the government that so many Filipinos have to go abroad. If there were good jobs here, why would we ever think of going abroad?”
Mabini Mayer Nilo Villanueva said he had often heard this criticism from overseas workers. Villanueva was elected in 2007 by campaigning in Italy and championing the interests of overseas workers. The mayor connected Little Italy to the water grid last year.
Yet, even as Villanueva has sought overseas workers’ investments, he said he worried about the country’s reliance on remittances.
“Many people have become lazy now because they are overdependent on remittances,” he said.
He said the municipality not only counted on investment from its overseas workers, but also had become dependent on their earnings in less direct ways. Most overseas workers here, for example, send their children to private elementary schools, which have smaller class sizes and offer richer educational and extracurricular programs.
“They are helping the municipal government because we are spending less on public schools,” Villanueva said.
At the private Santa Fe Integrated School, which charges an annual tuition of US$370, 80 percent of the 250 students are children of overseas workers. About half have both parents overseas and are being raised by relatives or housekeepers, principal Louella de Leon said.
De Leon said that while the children of overseas workers were better off financially, they lacked discipline and scored poorer grades than the children whose parents were present.
“The kids of OFWs have everything in terms of gadgets — the latest cellphones that you can’t even find in Manila — and they have bigger allowances than even the teachers,” de Leon said. “But they have an attitude. They are arrogant.”
“I don’t understand their parents,” she added. “They are working as maids in Italy and they hire maids here to take care of their own children. They value their money more than their families.”
The national government has highlighted the positive effects of the OFW economy, calling the workers “heroes” and presenting awards for the model OFW family of the year.
In an interview in Manila, Vivian F. Tornea, a director at the Department of Labor’s Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, said the benefits of the remittance economy far outweighed the costs. Tornea denied that the national and local governments had become dependent on remittances, saying that overseas workers’ contributions to building public infrastructure were simply “payback” because they did not pay income taxes.
While the government has welcomed the overseas workers’ remittances, it has done too little to ensure their long-term financial health, critics say. Ella Cristina Gloriane, a personal finance adviser at financial literacy program Atikha, said overseas workers often incurred debts overseas to build their dream houses here.
“That’s one reason why many of them can’t come home,” she said. “They have to keep working to repay their debts.”
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