Access to social benefits and services. OFWs are directly made to pay for their own services and benefits. The main government vehicle for providing migrants social and welfare services is the OWWA funded primarily by US$25 in contributions from OFWs on a per contract basis, as stipulated under the OWWA Omnibus Policies issued by its Board of Trustees in September 2003. This however means that around a million undocumented migrants and the perhaps millions more whose contracts are inactive are excluded from benefiting from the OWWA trust fund. There were 1.24 million OFWs enrolled with P1.38 billion in collections in 2008. The OWWA fund had a balance of Pl l.5 billion as of December 2008. The OWWA Omnibus Policies also further undermine OFWs'access to welfare services in various ways. They effectively stripped off salient OW-WA progralns such as the medicare services and legal assistance prograrr! the General Financial Assistance Program and the Pre-Departure Loan. As it is, OFWs trying to avail of their rightful OWWA benefits are confronted with tedious and burdensome bureaucratic processes. The Omnibus Policies also allow Trustees to decide on the use of OWWA Funds without any consultation with OFWs regarding the use of their money. The funds have already been used outside of any real scrutiny by OFWs. There have already been cases of anomalous use of OWWA funds: unauthorized and questionable release of US$293,500 from OWWA funds to General Cimatu, head of the Middle East Disaster-Preparedness Team in 2003; anomalous investment of P850 million pesos in the Smokey Mountain Participation Project Certificate where interest income has until now not been fully collected; and transfer of the P530,382,446 OWWA Medicare Fund from the P4 billion Trust Fund to the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PHIC). In this context it is a matter of concern that the OWWA Omnibus Policies effectively give even greater discretion to the Office of the President accessing the money of OFWs entrusted to owwA. The government reports bilateral agreements on social security with other countries but these are hardly known by OFWs and information dissemination is minimal if not absent. In any case there do not appear to be such agreements with any of the top destination countries of OFWs. Indeed, if anything the government has forged other agreements such as the Unified Contract (with Saudi Arabia) which contravenes laws that protect labor and migrant rights. Access to justice. OFWs face difficulties in seeking effective legal remedies and in asserting their rights against their employers from lack of capacity and a wide range of disincentives they face. They are fust of all already disadvantaged by being non-nationals of the countries they work in with host countries often giving preferential treatment to the employers who are nationals whenever conflicts between them arise. This partiality also obtains when OFWs get into trouble with the law involving other foreign nationals, not necessarily their employers. However that basic situation of discrimination is very much aggravated by the government's apparent inability to provide sufficient compensatory support to tilt the balance more towards aggrieved OFWs manifesting in unhelpful 38