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ADVINCULA, DUTERTE AT LUNETA MILLENNIUM MASS

A special concelebrated mass called Misa Milenya -- will be said at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila’s Rizal Park (Luneta) on New Year’s eve.

Secretary Berna Romulo Puyat of the Department of Tourism (DOT), who chairs the Committee on the Turn-of-the-Century Celebration, said Jose Cardinal Advincula will officiate at the mass, scheduled for Dec. 31 at 5:00 P.M. An ecumenical prayer will precede the celebration of the mass to emphasize the ecumenical nature of the occasion, Araneta said.

Puyat said President Rodrigo "Rody" Duterte and other members of the First Family, will attend the holy mass.

Representatives of labor, women and children, fisherfolk, farmers, indigenous communities, and other sectors will join the First Family in the offertory procession.

Bro. Mike Velarde, the founder of El Shaddai DWXI Prayer Partners Foundation International, has announced that some 500,000 El Shaddai members will attend the millennium mass.

During the mass, seminarians, parish choirs and guest artists will render praise songs and traditional music. Meanwhile, bands from the Philippine Army and the Philippine Navy will also be on hand to provide music.

Araneta said Pope John Paul II’s message to the Filipino people will be read during the mass at the Quirino Grandstand as well as the selected Marian Shrines in various parts of the country.

At the Luneta and at least 10 shrines around the Philippines, there will be processions to be led by images of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The concelebrated Mass, which will project the Philippines as a pilgrimage destination in Asia, will be covered by the national multi-media with possible hook-up by satellite. It will also be recorded, with the videotape to be sent to the Sister Angelica Channel.

The religious activity has been arranged in cooperation with the Wells Spring of Life, Sacred Land of Asia, Marian Movement, Charismatic Movement of the Philippines, Confradia, and Association of Shrine Rectors and Pilgrimage Promoters of the Philippines.

The millennium mass is part of the Pistang Milenyo Filipino, the weeklong festivities prepared by the Estrada administration to welcome the new millennium.

The Philippines will welcome the new millennium with a nationwide kapit-bisig (linking of arms) on New Year’s Eve at the Rizal Park and other parts of the country to demonstrate the unity of all Filipinos in the 21st century.

President Duterte will lead the symbolic kapit-bisig ritual, which will be replicated all over the country.

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Duterte signs law creating OFW department

The new Department of Migrant Workers consolidates key services for overseas Filipino workers under one agency

Towards the tail end of his administration, President Rodrigo Duterte finally signed into law a bill creating a department for the welfare of overseas Filipino workers, to be formally called Department of Migrant Workers.

Duterte affixed his signature to the law on Thursday, December 30, during a ceremony in Malacañang attended by lawmakers.

The law’s enactment is a fulfillment of Duterte’s 2016 presidential campaign promise to create an OFW department that would consolidate all relevant agencies under one to make it easier for migrant workers to get their documents and seek help from the government. His strong remarks about OFW welfare as a presidential candidate helped deliver him a landslide win among overseas Filipinos in the 2016 elections.

The President had asked Congress for this department in four State of the Nation Addresses.

Duterte had certified as urgent the Senate bills for creating the OFW department last May, after the House of Representatives had passed its version. The Senate eventually passed their version of the proposed legislation last December 14. Their version was then adopted by the House.

How will the new department change things?

The new law turns the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration into the Department of Migrant Workers, which would be mandated to oversee all policies protecting the welfare of OFWs.

The functions of other agencies currently under several government departments and handling different OFW concerns would be merged and transferred under the new agency. These offices include:

• National Reintegration Center under the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA)
• All Philippine overseas labor offices under the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE)
• International Labor Affairs Bureau under DOLE
• National Maritime Polytechnic under DOLE
• Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs under the Department of Foreign Affairs
• International Social Services Office under the Department of Social Welfare and Development
• Commission on Filipino Overseas under the Office of the President

OWWA, meanwhile, would become an attached agency of the Department of Migrant Workers.

The new department would be tasked to regulate the recruitment, employment, and deployment of OFWs and spearhead investigations and file cases concerning illegal recruitment and human trafficking cases involving OFWs.

Cabinet Secretary Karlo Nograles has described the new department as envisioned to provide a more “efficient” way of handling the “multidimensional concerns” of OFWs. 

Senator Joel Villanueva, the chairperson of the Senate labor committee, has said the new department could help OFWs navigate all the challenges of living abroad in a post-pandemic world.

But the Department of Migrant Workers was not without its critics.

Labor rights group Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (Sentro) rejected the proposed department, saying it would “institutionalize” the country’s reliance on labor exportation for economic development. Villanueva, after the Senate passed their bill, disagreed with this interpretation of the policy.

“We are in unison that it is not the policy of the state to promote overseas employment and it is our common aspiration that Filipinos will migrate or work abroad only out of choice and not out of necessity,” he had said last December 14.

Other groups like Center for Migrant Advocacy and Migrante, meanwhile, questioned the added value of a new department when there are ways to improve the old system, such as the establishment of one-stop service centers for OFWs in different parts of the country and the joint manual for overseas operations that harmonizes the efforts of the foreign affairs, labor, and social welfare departments when handling specific cases of OFWs in distress. – Rappler.com

https://www.rappler.com/nation/duterte-signs-law-creating-ofw-department/

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