Santiago’s bill to ensure funds for OFWs facing criminal raps
Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago has filed a bill to ensure that the government’s legal assistance fund will be made immediately and continuously available to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) facing criminal charges abroad.
At present, Santiago said Republic Act No. 8042 known as the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act and its implementing rules allow access to the legal assistance fund only in the absence of a counsel de oficio or court-appointed lawyer or, at all instances, upon conviction and the penalty meted is life imprisonment or death.
“Other than these two instances, access to the fund is not mandatory, and amounts may be disbursed only under meritorious circumstances as determined by the undersecretary for migrant workers affairs,” she said in a statement on Thursday.
This, she said, led embattled Filipinos abroad to entrust their fates in the hands of foreign court-appointed lawyers who most likely could not sufficiently communicate to the OFWs in distress in a language that the OFWs knew.
“Worse, OFWs are left to fend for themselves completely without competent legal assistance at the time of their arrest all the way to trial proper—a crucial period where legal assistance is most needed,” the senator said.
Santiago then filed Senate Bill No. 2739, which sought to amend the existing law by expanding the legal assistance fund managed by the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Available from time of arrest
“If amended, the law will guarantee that the legal assistance fund shall at all times be made available from the time of arrest or charging up to the trial, and at all levels of appeal, for migrant workers facing charges with the prescribed penalty of life imprisonment or death,” she said.
Congress raised the legal assistance fund to P100 million this year from P30 million in 2014, but Malacañang, in its veto message, placed it under appropriations approved for “conditional implementation,” citing lack of income sources for the creation of the special fund.
This, despite the fact that personal remittances from OFWs increased to some $27 billion last year from some $25 billion in 2013, based on Central Bank data. There were some 2.2 million OFWs in 2013, the latest figures from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.
“If the country is to continue to allow the export of our labor force, it is imperative that we do not abandon distressed OFWs to life behind bars or even death without giving them the competent and timely legal assistance they need and deserve,” Santiago said.
Santiago made the proposal following the case of Mary Jane Veloso, a convicted drug mule in Indonesia. Veloso was given reprieve from execution by the Indonesian government after the Philippines appealed that she be allowed to testify in proceedings here against her alleged illegal recruiter.
READ: Veloso reprieve a ‘miracle’
“Mary Jane Veloso lives for now, but she is still on death row. The government may have persuaded Indonesia to postpone the execution, but it appears that it has failed to make sure there is no death sentence in the first place,” she said.
The senator assailed the government’s failure to immediately provide lawyers for Veloso, who reportedly had no counsel when her initial testimonies were recorded, and was assisted during trial by an unlicensed translator.
READ: Lawyers hit gov’t for lack of assistance to Veloso
When Veloso was sentenced to death in 2010, the Philippines appealed for clemency in 2011, saying that Veloso is a victim of an international syndicate using unsuspecting OFWs as drug couriers. But the appeal was rejected in January 2015 and Veloso was scheduled for execution.
“Must we always resort to last-minute remedies? Must we wait for Filipinos to be put behind foreign bars or sentenced to death before we act?” Santiago asked. RC
