SENATOR Ralph Recto has cautioned the government against committing "a great disservice" to overseas Filipinos with its plan to close down at least 10 embassies and consulates, mostly in Europe.

He described as a "wrong cost-cutting strategy" the move to terminate the this July of the embassies and consulates in Barcelona (Spain), Dublin (Ireland), Frankfurt (Germany),Stockholm (Sweden), Bucharest (Romania), Helsinki (Finland), Caracas (Venezuela), Havana (Cuba), Saipan and Palau. 

The Department of Foreign Affairs is closing down Philippine foreign missions around the world supposedly to save money to be channeled to embassies in the Middle East, where overseasFilipino workers are under threat from bloody civil uprisings.

The senator is worried that thousands of Filipinos will be denied easy access to the services of their embassies and consulates once the proposal pushes through. Of the 239 countries, there are only 66 Philippine embassies, 23 consulates and four diplomatic missions worldwide. 

There are about 40,000 Filipinos working and living in Frankfurt; 30,000 in Barcelona, more than 8,000 OFWs in Palau and Saipan and at least more than a thousand Filipinos in Dublin,Stockholm, Bucharest, Helsinki, Caracas and Havana.

“Serving Filipinos abroad through the presence of embassies should not be treated as a budgetary expense but an investment or rather an obligatory “thank you note”,” said Recto, chair of the Senate ways and means.         

He said the estimated savings of P100 million to P150 million "is nothing" compared to the contributions of the overseas Filipino workers working in Europe and other major cities of the world.        “If we can spend P34.9 billion for the poor under the conditional cash transfer program, what’s P150 million to serve productive OFWs who are also symbolically playing the role as our de facto ambassadors to many foreign households and workplaces,” he said.

Recto also said the embassies and consulates also double as the country’s tourism totem pole to European tourists who might want to validate “how fun it is in the Philippines.”

“There is sadness written all over this proposal and foreign tourists would easily sense that nothing is fun in a country that is shutting down its embassies to the detriment of migrant Filipinos,” he said.

Source: http://www.journal.com.ph/index.php/news/national/25579-recto-warns-on-embassies-consulates-closure