Recruitment firms may now apply for 1-year license extension

The Blas F. Ople Building that houses the POEA on EDSA. (Photo from the POEA website)

MANILA, Philippines — Recruitment agencies may now apply for a one-year extension of their provisional license following the recent slump in the deployment of migrant workers, according to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).

Under POEA Governing Board Resolution No. 5, the provision mandating that a provisional license issued to a recruitment agency is only valid for a non-extendible period of 2 years has been held in abeyance due to the recent events in host countries that have affected the deployment of migrant workers.

Among these are the deployment ban in Kuwait, the temporary suspension of processing of cleaners in Qatar, the Saudization policy of Saudi Arabia, the temporary suspension of licenses for recruitment of expatriate manpower in some professions in Oman, and the transition for the Japan deployment from the Japan International Training Cooperation Organization to the Office for the Technical Intern Training.

Recruitment agencies noted that these factors prevented them from meeting POEA’s required deployment of 100 workers to their principals so that their provisional license can be upgraded to a regular one.

Based on POEA data, the deployment of new hires dropped from 582,816 in 2016 to 420,639 in 2018.

The number of rehired workers also went down from over a million in 2016 to just a little over 600,000 in 2018.

According to the POEA order released on Monday, before its provisional license can be extended for a year, the agency should submit a written request for the extension and cite the reason why it failed to deploy the required number of workers to its principals.

The following other documents should be submitted to the POEA:

• sufficient job order balance from its accredited principal
• confirmation from the principal that the job orders are available
• certificate of no pending case from the adjudication office
• certificate of no pending repatriation case

The 1-year extension will be valid from the date of the expiration of the provisional license.

(Editor: Alexander T. Magno)