It is well that Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario has led a team to seek the safety and possible repatriation, if absolutely necessary, of close to 5,000 Filipinos now working in Syria.

That kind of initiative is truly commendable, and Del Rosario deserves credit for putting the welfare of our millions of countrymen, more than eight million of them as of last count, in 110 countries on top of government’s priorities. As they and their families should be.

What used to be denounced as a colossal failure on the part of government in not providing for decent jobs in the country for the teeming and largely educated millions, this program which took roots and got into high gear during the Marcos years has proven to be the country’s lifeblood specially in the aftermath of the series of global economic downturns over the past decades. The organized overseas employment program (we have had continuing deployment of Filipinos overseas since the turn of the century, but it was only during President Marcos’ time that it was systematized and organized) has uplifted millions of our countrymen, provided the country with much-needed foreign exchange, and saved us from the kind of social upheavals engendered by joblessness in many countries.

Initially, it was designed to be a “temporary” safety valve, an emergency-employment program of sorts while the country restructured itself to accommodate the teeming millions who graduate into the labor force every year.

But given more thought as the Marcos crew did in the ‘70s and as should now be restructured to ensure, like the Chinese and the Koreans did and continue doing, that the program introduce and incubate world-class companies not just individuals, this initiative can truly become a key plank of our national survival.

No less than Ayala Corp. chairman and CEO Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala has noted the program’s dynamic contributions to our well- being, saying, in effect, that our OFWs have become the “new middle class”.

Said Zobel:“...They have brought back new ideas and aspirations of better education for their children, better governance from their leaders, and have initiated entrepreneurial activities that spur economic growth in their towns and cities. We have also seen an increasing desire of our community overseas to give back to the country through philanthropic contributions as well as through volunteerism..”

This advisory is nothing new. As early as the ‘70s when the program was organized into what it has now become, we already had dreams of what it can be. The problem is the succeeding administrations did not try hard enough to uplift the program and make it the kind of institutionalized effort with all the attendant rules, incentives, and recognition it deserves. It left its future to the tender mercies of the “receiving countries”, as it were, or, worse, to the needs and caprices of the middlemen who were more interested in simply poaching our skills than developing world-class companies which can bring the entire crew into the opportunities which awaited overseas.          

In the ‘70s, for example, we had companies like EEI, CDCP, DMCI, AG & P, AsiaKonstruct, RISCO (Razon Group), and even LandOil and the Ayala’s Makati Development Corp. which competed with Korean companies such as Hyundai, Hanil, and Samsung for contracts overseas either as full contractors or sub-contractors of the likes of Bechtel, Flour, ENI, and other multinational firms.

Manning agencies such as the Magsaysay Group and the Delgado’s TDG were also pushed into organized crewing and related undertakings. They were prodded and provided assistance to the fullest by the Marcos administration. 

Some of them floundered along the way, others like EEI, Razon and AsiaKonstruct as well as the manning agencies have continued to successfully compete overseas. Unfortunately, after Marcos, these companies were left to their own devices.

Unlike the Koreans which were pushed to diversification and greater heights by their government they had to work using their own resources. They did and are still working as well. But unlike the Koreans and the Chinese, they never got to reach their full potentials. The program was limited by our own inability to respond to the dictates of the times.    

The succeeding governments got so immersed in the nitty-gritty of the problems affecting household workers and other individual employees. They forgot to look at the big picture. This is not to suggest that those individual problems should have been left to the sidelines. Not at all.

But even those would have been easier to resolve and even more efficiently and optimally worked out had the handling officials realized that they were better off with an organized program for house helps. How so? They should have imposed the requirement that those who will concentrate on the deployment of house helps better have offices in the destinations themselves to take care of their recruits on a continuing basis.

If that meant registering in those countries as well so be it. Why allow a company owned by Hong Kong or Singaporean or Saudi nationals to simply get the house help and let us be content with the pithy mobilization fee? Why not impose the condition that if you are going to send house helps to any of those places better put up an office there and cut off the middle man?

That could have been done early on as it was already being discussed before the Marcos administration  left office. But that is water under the bridge already.

Having gone this far and having realized that this once benignly spotted industry had actually saved the country from huge troubles, it is time we salute our OFWs. But more than giving awards or doing the annual salubong thing at the airport, why  not restructure the entire program and truly organize it in such a manner that we incubate not just world-class companies and world-class individuals but families and communities stitched together by a comprehensive plan that takes care not only of generating the best employment, remittances, and other economic benefits but the social benefits of education, health, and wholesome families, not just houses, as well.

It can be done if only we try. That will be the best “thank you” we can give to the millions out there who have sacrificed their all for the common good.