DEAR Mr. President:
Despite the diligent efforts of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) to frequently monitor the status of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), there are still many cases of them not being found or contacted in times of emergency.
There are also some cases wherein our OFWs get into some troubles abroad, without our knowing about it until they are jailed or executed.
What is needed to solve this problem is to build a database of all OFWs abroad regardless of who they are, and where they are. That is a goal that has not been done before, and it is about time that the government does it.
Fortunately, Sir, a Filipino software developer has come up with such a database, and I am happy to inform you that it will not cause the Philippine government a single centavo to implement it โ Mr. Ferdenand Ibraheem Lawag Sabado, a Microsoft certified programmer, together with an all-Filipino development team.
Although I am not a programmer myself, I was able to help the team in terms of its product development and marketing planning.
Here is how the database will work: All recruitment agencies will be required to register their departing clients with the database administrators.
Upon arrival in their host countries, they will again be required to again register with the nearest embassy or consulate, through the local Labor Attachรฉ or the Migrant Workers Office (MWO) representative.
Upon completing the registration process, the OFW will be given a free account in a mobile app that will have a โhot buttonโ that he or she could press in the event of an emergency.
As soon as he or she presses the โhot buttonโ, an alarm will ring in the cellphones of designated persons at the recruitment agencies, at the embassies and consulates, and at the central office of the DMW. Any of these three designated persons can call or text the OFW right away, to find out what his or her problem is.
Although the software is already capable of this feature, it is up to the government to finalize the rules.
To offer this database for free to the government, Mr. Sabado plans to cover his costs and raise revenues by way of monthly subscriptions and some other ancillary sources of income such as advertising and promotions. This mode of doing business is very common now among web based and cloud based such as Zoom and Netflix, among others.
Since my days as the Management Information Services (MIS) Director of the DFA, I have always wanted to build this type of interactive OFW database for the government. However, at that time, it was very expensive to do it, and no budgets were available at that time.
Fast forward to today Mr. President, the budget is no longer a problem, because the database is already being offered for free, at no cost to the government.
For your information Sir, Mr. Sabado is only one of many other programmers and developers who want to help the government by developing mobile apps and interactive databases for free. Please let me know if you want to contact them.|
