“On weekdays, throngs of Filipino men in the Rizal Park (popularly known as Luneta) congregate near booths of manning agencies which recruit workers to be deployed on foreign ships,” wrote Jean Encinas-Franco of the University of the Philippines-Diliman in her essay, “Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) as Heroes: Discursive Origins of the ‘Bagong Bayani’ in the Era of Labor Export.”
“Unbeknownst to passersby wondering what the commotion is all about, these men belong to the nearly 300,000 Filipino seafarers plying the world’s seas and for whom the phrase kayod marino may have come to be equated with their hard work.”
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, there is an estimated number of 2.2 million overseas Filipino workers as of the third quarter in 2016.
The OFWs’ occupation groups are largely comprised of: elementary occupations (34.5 percent); service and sales workers (19 percent); plant and machine operators and assemblers (12.8 percent); and craft and related trades workers (11.6 percent).
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Said former Presidential Deputy Spokesperson Charito Planas in connection with the Malcañang’s tribute to OFWs: “…OFWs are our modern-day heroes who serve well their foreign employers as office staff, laborers, domestic helpers, caregivers, teachers, nurses, and doctors for the betterment of the lives of their families whom they chose to leave behind.”
Many OFWs choose to remit a portion of their savings to buying their dream home —whether it is a house and lot, a condominium unit, or a parcel of land, in order to provide more for their families.
