MANILA - The lack of employment in the Philippines has forced many Filipinos to work overseas including in countries considered dangerous due to security threats.

Activist group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) on Wednesday pointed out that the 10 Filipino workers who died in a chopper crash in Afghanistan “underscores the increasing desperation for jobs of many workers under the Arroyo administration”.

Reports stated that the helicopter crashed at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base in southern Afghanistan killing its passengers including the Filipino workers.

The group said that attention must be given to the presence of OFWs in a country where an existing deployment ban is in place.

In 2007, the Philippine government imposed a deployment ban in Afghanistan due to prevailing hostilities in the country.

The government, Bayan said, should be held accountable for its failure to monitor OFW deployment. Reports added that seven of the 10 killed OFWs were legal migrants but ended up in Afghanistan.

“Migrant workers are practically left to fend for themselves and government does not care where they go as long as they do not add up to vast multitude of jobless workers in the Philippines and they remit their earnings,” Bayan said in a press statement.

Meanwhile, Migrante-Middle East noted that there are still recruitment agencies in the Philippines that connive with their overseas counterparts in sending workers to Iraq and Afghanistan despite the government’s deployment ban.

“The imposition of deployment ban by the Arroyo administration through the POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration) will not relieve the former on its primary duty protecting its citizen from harm or danger working in war-torn countries, legally or illegally. Monitoring and prosecuting recruitment agencies violating the ban is the next step it should sincerely be doing to ensure that no OFWs will be sent to war-torn countries like Iraq and Afghanistan,” Migrante-M.E Regional Coordinator John Leonard Monterona said.