Cash payouts totaling P8 million went to overseas Filipino workers and their relatives in Nueva Vizcaya, along with 3,500 sacks of rice, as the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration brought its OFW Serbisyo Caravan to the province. Thousands of beneficiaries were covered by the release.
Governor Jose V. Gambito pointed to the working arrangement between the provincial government and the welfare agency as the reason the aid reached migrant families directly. Recipients walked out of the Capitol “smiling” after collecting the food packs and cash, he said, thanking OWWA for lightening the load on households that rely on wages sent home from abroad.
The province closed the activity with an honorary dinner at the Carlos M. Padilla Convention Center. There, Gambito conferred on OWWA Administrator Patricia Yvonne M. Caunan the title of “Adopted Daughter of Nueva Vizcaya,” citing the agency’s support for the local overseas worker sector.
Caunan used the occasion to describe how OWWA has pushed services once confined to Filipinos working overseas — driver’s license renewal among them — down to local government units. Families no longer need to make long trips or wait on relatives abroad to process transactions on their behalf, she said.
