OFWs suffer harassment due to Leni UN message

Some 500 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) want Vice President Leni Robredo impeached because of the video message she delivered before the UN that allegedly led their employers to harass them in their workplaces.

Interior and Local Government assistant secretary Epimaco Densing III said OFWs in Italy, Canada and UK reported being ostracized “because of Robredo’s malicious video message.”

“Many OFWs complained the past 10 days because they are harassed by their employers... they could not work properly because they are being confronted on the killings here,” Densing said in a DZRJ forum in Makati City.

Most of the complaining OFWs, he added, are working at health care facilities.

In the video message, Robredo claimed Filipinos have become “hopeless and helpless” against the killings, among other opinions she raised on President Duterte’s war against illegal drugs.

Densing said bloggers and lawyers would draft the impeachment complaint using economic sabotage as ground. Some of the lawyers created a unified email address so they could consolidate their evidence and other needed data.

He added that the group, who called themselves the Impeach VP Leni Team, would review one of Duterte’s speeches that asked people to stop impeaching the Vice President as he might have said “step it up” and not “stop it.”

The assistant secretary said the Philippine economy was affected by what Robredo did.

“If it did not affect our economy and OFWs, maybe we would have just dismissed it… but her audience was the international community. This is too much,” Densing said.

Robredo’s comments, he added, led to the country’s loss of $432 million in grants from the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MMC) and $1.8 billion in investments from three Spanish firms. This is reportedly aside from the negative impact on tourism and the planned cancellations of trade privileges to the European Union.