By Peter Alagos
Business Reporter
The United Filipino Organisations in Qatar (UFOQ) has mobilised a signature campaign urging the Philippine government to increase tax exemption fees for packages sent by overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
The petition also seeks the expulsion of Commissioner Alberto Lina from the Bureau of Customs (BoC), which earned flak from thousands of OFWs who protested the BoC’s random inspection of “balikbayan boxes” or parcels sent by Filipinos working abroad.
Speaking to Gulf Times, UFOQ chairperson on information management system, Ressie Fos, said the signatures will be attached to the petition, which it plans to submit to the department of foreign affairs (DFA) though the Philippine Embassy in Qatar on September 15.
Fos said UFOQ’s petition runs parallel with Senate Bill 2913 or the “Balikbayan Box Law” (BBL) filed by Senate president pro-tempore Ralph Recto. The BBL bill seeks to raise the tax-exempt value of items inside a balikbayan box from $500 to $2,000.
“The UFOQ’s petition supports and substantiates Senator Recto’s bill in the Senate,” Fos pointed out.
In a statement, Recto said he filed the BBL bill “amid the order of Malacanang to stop the random inspection of balikbayan boxes after OFW groups and lawmakers criticised the move of the BoC.”
Recto said by raising the tax-exempt ceiling, “the ‘motive and the temptation’ to open boxes sent by ordinary OFWs will be gone.”
“The BoC memorandum, which pegs a maximum value of $500 per balikbayan box, is 25 years old and had been overtaken by foreign exchange upheavals and inflationary pressures,” Recto said.
Fos also said UFOQ, a Philippine Embassy-accredited umbrella body of 165 Filipino organisations in Qatar, has partnered with Philippine-based labour union, Federation of Free Workers, which will follow-up the copies of the petition letter that will be sent to the Senate and Congress.
In a statement sent to Gulf Times, Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos said Lina’s claims that balikbayan boxes are being used for smuggling arms and illegal drugs “has no basis on record.”
According to Marcos, BoC deputy commissioner Jessie Dellosa admitted that there was no case on record and proof that firearms and drugs smuggling were done through balikbayan boxes last year.
“It must still be made of public record that in so far as the Intelligence Unit of the BoC is concerned, smuggling of drugs and firearms through balikbayan boxes is virtually non-existent,” Marcos said.
Marcos also said Lina admitted that “no consultations were made with the OFW sector nor with government agencies such as the DFA, Department of Labour and Employment, and the Commission
on Filipinos Overseas.”