Representation

The conflict in the Middle East that forced more than 30,000 Filipinos to leave Lebanon exposed yet another limitation regarding our government's seeming lack of concern with the overseas Filipino workers. There exists an agency appropriately named the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration that is responsible for maintaining a fund built with contributions from the same overseas workers to the tune of 7.6-billion pesos. When the critical need to use this fund arose, all the government could do was disburse 150 million pesos, a pittance considering the large number of people who needed to be evacuated quickly.

This only stresses the point that overseas workers need to be represented in our government. The untold millions of Filipinos struggling abroad to keep the Philippine economy afloat do not have a single representative in our legislature that has provisions for "minority" representation. This needs to change soon as well.