Progressive lawmakers in the House of Representatives have filed House Bill 5704 asking Congress to appropriate P500 million as supplemental budget to fund the legal assistance for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in distress this year.
The seven-member Makabayan bloc said President Aquino conditionally vetoed the proposed DFA legal assistance fund for “lack of income sources to justify its creation” when he signed the 2015 national budget. The lawmakers added that death convict Mary Jane Veloso was not provided with timely and adequate government assistance by the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) since 2010, It was only after Veloso was sentenced to death that the DFA hired Indonesian law firm Rudyantho & Partners to help her, they added.
More than 1,000 OFWs are detained abroad of which Veloso and more than 80 others are facing death sentences.
