President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday made a final appeal to Congress to pass key measures that would uplift migrant workers and help Filipinos bounce back from the health and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic as he enters his last year in office.
In his last State of the Nation Address, the 76-year-old leader urged Congress to pass the proposed Department of Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos, which he certified as urgent back in May.
"I would like to reiterate my call to Congress to pass legislation for a single agency that shall focus on and respond quickly to the concerns of our OFWs," he said. "Kailangan po ito because they are suffering."
The proposed department will serve as the single government body focused on addressing the needs and concerns of OFWs. It will absorb existing government agencies concerned with OFWs including the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.
The measure is approved on third and final reading in the House of Representatives, but is still awaiting committee approval in the Senate.
Apart from the proposed OFW department, Duterte also called on Congress to pass the measure establishing the Center for Disease Prevention and Control and the Virology and Vaccine Institute of the Philippines, hoping that it would soon allow the Philippines to make its own vaccines.
"However poor we are, I think that the Filipinos, given the proper support and equipment that they have to use, I am sure that the Filipino brain can also process or make vaccines in the future," he said.
Early in the pandemic, Duterte offered a P10-million reward to any Filipino who could discover a vaccine against COVID-19. The government ended up procuring vaccines from international manufacturers to inoculate the public against the disease.
Duterte also appealed to Congress to approve the measures seeking to liberalize the country's economy to foreign investments, including the amendments to the Foreign Investments Act, the Public Service Act, and the Retail Trade Liberalization Act.
Senate President Vicente Sotto III earlier said these measures were part of the priority legislation of the chamber in the resumption of its sessions, noting that their approval would take away the need for the economic Charter change being proposed by the House of Representatives.
Duterte's final SONA, which is the longest post-EDSA, focused mostly on his administration's campaign against illegal drugs and less on the government's plans to address the looming surge of COVID-19 infections due to the highly contagious Delta variant.