SECTION 1. Coverage. — This Rule shall apply to every contract worker and seaman recruits. It shall also apply to licensed or authorized recruiters and/or their foreign principals or employers.
SECTION 2. Obligation to remit. — It shall be mandatory for a worker or seaman to remit regularly a portion of his foreign exchange earnings abroad to his beneficiary, through the Philippine banking system. This obligation shall be stipulated in the following documents:
a) Contract of employment and/or service between foreign based employer and a worker;
b) Affidavit of undertaking whereby a worker obligates himself to remit a portion of his earnings to his beneficiaries; and
c) Application for a license or authority to recruit workers.
SECTION 2-A. Obligation to Report. — Agencies and entities shall submit periodic reports to the Central Bank of the Philippines on their foreign exchange earnings, copies of which shall be furnished by the Administration.
SECTION 3. Amount of foreign exchange remittances. — The amount of foreign exchange remittance referred to in Section 2 hereof, shall be a minimum of 70% of the overseas workers basic salary in foreign exchange in the case of construction and sea-based workers; and a minimum of 50% in the case of other workers.
SECTION 4. Form of Remittance. — Remittance of foreign exchange may be done individually by a worker or collectively through an employer under a payroll deduction scheme, to be approved by the Bureau, NSB, OEDB as appropriate.
SECTION 5. Procedure of remittance. — (a) The workers, prior to departure, shall open a deposit account in favor of his beneficiary in any Philippine bank. A foreign currency account may also be opened by the worker.
The applicant shall inform the Bureau, the OEDB or NSB, as the case may be his deposit account number.
(b) In the case of seamen, construction workers and other organized work crews involving at least twenty-five (25) workers, the foreign currency/peso account shall be opened by the employer with any Philippine bank upon the signing of the employment contract. The account shall be accompanied by a covering letter of nomination of beneficiaries and the date of payment of the allotment to the beneficiary as may be stipulated by the employee and the licensed agency, manning agent or construction contractor.
(c) At the end of every period as may be stipulated in the notice as payment, the licensed agency, construction contractor or manning agent shall prepare a payroll sheet indicating the names of workers covered by the scheme, their beneficiaries, their individual bank account numbers, the amount of foreign currency remitted and the peso equivalent thereof. This payroll sheet, together with the peso check representing the remittances, shall be forwarded to the bank concerned with instruction to credit the account of the worker or beneficiaries. A copy of the payroll sheet shall be furnished to the Bureau, OEDB or NSB as the case may be, on a monthly basis.
SECTION 6. Permanent Secretariat. — A permanent inter-agency Secretariat in the Department of Labor and Employment to direct and monitor implementation of this Rule is hereby established. It shall have the power and duty to:
(a) Avail itself of the assistance of the agencies represented in the Foreign Exchange Remittance Committee created under Letter of Instruction No. 90 to enable it to effectively carry out its duties.
(b) Assist the committee in carrying out a continuing informational and educational campaign to promote foreign exchange remittance by workers.
(c) Establish and maintain an information monitoring system to determine periodically the status of remittances, particularly the number of remitters, amount and nature of remittances, amounts actually received by the beneficiaries, etc.
SECTION 7. Responsibility of employer or his representative. — The employer or his representative shall undertake the proper implementation of this Rule by providing facilities to effect the remittances and monitoring of foreign exchange earnings. Failure to do so shall be subject to appropriate sanctions specified in the Code and Central Bank regulations.
SECTION 8. Failure or refusal to remit and trafficking in foreign currency. — A worker who willfully fails or refuses to remit the assigned portion of his foreign exchange earnings or is found to be engaged or is engaging in the illegal traffic or blackmarket of foreign exchange shall be liable under this Code and existing Central Bank rules.
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Rules to Implement the Labor Code
