MANILA —Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) launched a worldwide campaign to call for a sound family living wage in the Philippines as a way to address the rising OFW deployment and reduce chances of Filipinos falling victim to human trafficking.

In a press conference last January 28, Migrante International, a migrant workers’ rights group, presented a manifesto supporting the proposed minimum wage hike of P1,207 (US$20.55) for local workers in the private sector, and a P33,000 ($565.20) monthly salary for public sector employees. They were joined by Filipino migrants from the USA, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific region.

“The state’s definition of a living wage is the income required by a family to meet the expenses for food and other basic needs to ensure that every family can live decently. However, this part is not being upheld by the government itself,” stated the migrants group. “Instead, the government is driving worker’s wages down to the floor levels, which are far too low for families to meet their daily needs,” it added.

On average, the daily minimum wage in the Philippines is P440 ($7.49) with Metro Manila having the highest minimum wage of P645 ($10.98). This only covers less than 50 percent of the necessary income to support a family of five.

According to Migrante, basic goods costs have become too high to be sustained by local worker’s usual wages and OFW remittances alike. They also called on Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to address the low wages, working conditions, landlessness, as well as harassment and attacks faced by poor workers and farmers all over the country.

“This, coupled with landlessness and the lack of jobs, create a chronic poverty that drives millions of us and our families to work abroad in order to survive,” the manifesto stated.

Migrant workers overseas believe that a Philippine wage hike will be the lasting solution to the worsening cases of abuses of overseas Filipinos, claiming that the local economic crisis in the Philippines only breeds an environment for the rampant human trafficking of Filipino workers abroad.

“Our families should not have to constantly rely on the remittances born from our working two, to three, or even more jobs under exploitative and dangerous conditions,” added the migrant groups.

The manifesto was signed by over 156 organizations of OFWs and overseas Filipinos from the five global regions. (RTS, RVO)