Book III, Rule II, Section 4 of the Rules and Regulations Governing Overseas Employment as amended provides prescriptive period for the deployment of recruits as follows:

a) ONE HUNDRED TWENTY (120) calendar days from the signing of the employment contract for all landbased workers; and

b) SIXTY (60) calendar days from the date of processing by the Administration of the employment contracts of seafarers. (As amended).

Failure of the agency to deploy a worker within the prescribed period shall be a cause of suspension or cancellation of license or fine. In addition, the agency shall return all documents at no cost to the worker.

Pursuant to the abovecited provision, the Employment Contract Processing Branch (ECPB) and all Units issuing OECs will maintain a close monitor on the actual deployment of processed workers.

The measure is intended to ease our inventory of used OECs. It is also intended to check the indiscriminate processing of workers without sure deployment, thus minimizing the volume of undeployed processed workers.

Concerned agencies are therefore required to surrender to the ECPB or Units concerned expired OECs of their undeployed processed workers not later than FIFTEEN (15) days from the date of expiry thereof with an explanation on their failure to deploy the workers within the period prescribed by the Rules.

For strict compliance effective 1 February 1996.

Adopted: 24 Jan. 1996