MIGRANT and overseas Filipino workers (OFW) leaders sought the scrapping of the mandatory PhilHealth for OFWs, saying it is an additional burden amid the rising cost of basic goods and services.

'We have long clamored since the Duterte administration against forcing our Filipino migrant workers to contribute to Philhealth and other fees such as SSS and Pag-IBIG that unjustly burdens them financially and do not in the end, benefit them,' Dolores Balladares-Pelaez, secretary general of Migrante International and chairman of United Filipinos in Hong Kong, said.