THOUGHTSKOTO

Monday, March 13, 2017

Why OFWs Remain in Neck-deep Debts After Years Of Working Abroad?

From beginning to the end, the real life of OFWs are colorful indeed.
To work outside the country, they invest too much, spend a lot. They start making loans for the processing of their needed documents to work abroad.

From application until they can actually leave the country, they spend big sum of money for it.

But after they were being able to finally work abroad, the story did not just end there. More often than not, the big sum of cash they used to pay the recruitment agency fees cause them to suffer from indebtedness.

They were being charged and burdened with too much fees, which are not even compliant with the law. Because of their eagerness to work overseas, they immerse themselves to high interest loans for the sake of working abroad.

The recruitment agencies play a big role why the OFWs are suffering from neck-deep debts. Even some licensed agencies, they freely exploit the vulnerability of the OFWs.
Due to their greed to collect more cash from every OFWs that they deploy, it results to making the life of OFWs more miserable by burying them in debts.

The result of high fees collected by the agencies can even last even the OFWs have been deployed abroad. Some employers deduct it to their salaries for a number of months, leaving the OFWs broke when their much awaited salary comes.

But it doesn't end there. Some of these agencies conspire with their counterpart agencies to urge the foreign employers to cut the salary of the poor OFWs in their favor. That is of course, beyond the expectation of the OFWs.

Even before they leave, the promised salary is already computed and allocated. They have already planned how much they are going to send to their family back home. If the employer would cut the amount of the salary they are expecting to receive, the planned remittance will surely suffer, it includes the loans that they promised to be paid immediately on time when they finally work abroad.

There is such a situation that their family in the Philippines carry the burden of paying for these loans made by the OFW. For example. An OFW father that has found a mistress, which is a fellow OFW, who turned his back to his family and to his obligations to pay his loans made for the recruitment fees.
The result, the poor family back home, aside from not receiving any remittance, they will be the ones who are obliged to pay the loans made by the OFW, adding weight to the emotional burden they already had aside from their daily needs.