A grant of P20,000 went to each of 23 licensed teachers who had spent years working overseas, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) said, as the returnees prepared to take up posts in Philippine public schools.
The combined disbursement reached P460,000 and was handed out during a ceremony at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport. Recipients qualified under Sa Pinas, Ikaw ang Ma’am at Sir (SPIMS), a reintegration scheme the DMW runs together with the Department of Education (DepEd) for board-passing teachers who decide to come home after stints abroad.
The cash forms part of a standard teaching-assistance package extended to SPIMS beneficiaries, intended to cover classroom materials and ease their re-entry into the profession. According to the Philippine Information Agency, the same P20,000 per-teacher allocation was applied across Central Visayas last year, where 163 returnees shared in roughly P3.26 million worth of teaching kits — figures that place this latest round within a wider regional pattern of support.
DMW Secretary Hans Leo J. Cacdac, who led the awarding, described the recipients as people carrying a dual identity. “double and triple heroes,” he called returnees in earlier SPIMS events, casting them as both former migrant workers and educators now shaping the next generation of Filipino students.
The grants were distributed alongside the opening of an OFW Lounge and Facilitation Center at the Cebu airport, a separate DMW and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) initiative. Reporting by Cebu Daily News and Sun.Star indicates the lounge — the third of its kind in the country and the first in the Visayas — seats up to 80 workers and offers food, Wi-Fi, charging points and on-site OWWA services, while a companion facilitation center handles documents such as Overseas Employment Certificates.
SPIMS itself dates back more than a decade. Government data cited by GMA News Online shows the program has moved over 11,000 licensed teachers from overseas jobs into local public schools since 2014, with thousands receiving financial aid and several hundred completing online refresher courses. Eligibility generally requires applicants to be LET passers with recent teaching experience who have not resided in the Philippines for more than three consecutive years before returning.
