FOR DECADES we have called our Overseas Filipino Workers Bagong Bayani. We put their photos on airport billboards and we thank them in every State of the Nation Address.
Yet when they come home for good, tired and aging after a lifetime abroad, we leave them with almost nothing to live on. That contradiction is a national shame.
That is why the National Government, through the Senate, should immediately re-enact into law Senate Bill No. 252, the OFW Pension Act. No more delays. No more studies. Our retired and returning OFWs have waited long enough.
Let us be honest about what OFWs have done for this country. For more than forty years, their remittances have kept the Philippine economy afloat.
Nearly 11 percent of our GDP comes directly from their sacrifice. Their dollars built houses, sent children to college, paid hospital bills, and funded small businesses in every barangay in the nation. They did not just support their families. They sustained the Republic.
And what did we give them in return? OWWA gives repatriation and livelihood training. The DMW gives legal aid. SSS gives a pension that is often too small because contributions were voluntary for years for land-based OFWs. None of these provide what an aging worker truly needs: a guaranteed monthly pension that arrives every month with dignity.
Senate Bill 252, authored by Senator Erwin Tulfo, finally corrects this historic injustice. It creates a dedicated retirement pension exclusive to OFWs, separate from SSS, and built for the realities of overseas work. Any OFW who reaches 60 years of age and has accumulated at least 15 years of overseas employment will qualify. The proposed amount of P5,000 a month is not a fortune, but rather a foundation. It is food on the table. It is maintenance medicine. It is independence.
Why is a dedicated pension necessary? Because overseas work itself makes saving almost impossible.
An OFW driver in Saudi, a domestic helper in Hong Kong, a technician in Singapore does not keep his salary for himself. Every peso is divided. Tuition for the eldest, rice for the family, hospital bills for parents, debt payments at home. After 20 or 30 years abroad, many come home with empty hands. We call them heroes, but we allow them to grow old in poverty.
The nature of overseas work also makes it unpredictable. Contracts are short term. Employers change. Global crises happen. Age discrimination is real. Past 50 or 60, many OFWs can no longer get hired abroad, yet they are too young to be dependent and too old to start over. Without a pension, reintegration is a hollow word.
The OFW Pension Act makes reintegration real. The Department of Migrant Workers was created not just to deploy workers, but to bring them home with security. A pension under the DMW completes that mandate. It tells every OFW that the country has a plan for you beyond departure.
This is not charity. This is justice. This is debt repayment. We have collected the benefits of their labor for generations. It is time we return a fraction of that sacrifice in the form of law.
To the Senate, the call is clear. Fast track the review of Senate Bill 252. Re-enact it into law. Implement it immediately. Millions of retired and returning OFWs are watching and waiting. They endured loneliness, danger, and long separation from their families for us. The least we can do is ensure they do not spend their old age begging from their own children to survive.