''How can I find out if the contract I am signing to work as a nurse in Britain is valid or not?" asked a caller, who was preparing to leave the Philippines and join its seven million nationals who work overseas.

Another migrant worker said, "Is it a sin if my girlfriend gets an abortion? She will be deported if her employer finds out she's pregnant. We don't know what to do."

These are the range of questions that the radio programme 'Babaeng Migrante, May Kakampi Ka' (Women Migrant, You have an Ally), gets every Saturdays, from 11 a.m. to 12 noon.

The programme, aired throughout the Philippines via the AM station DWIZ, has become a lifeline of sorts for Filipino migrant workers and their families, who are swamped with queries as well as worries about their future and status in the very uncertain world of overseas employment.

"We have been acting like their counsellors and therapists," says Fe Necodemus, co-anchor of the programme and chair of the group Kakammpi, which works with migrant workers and their families.

"Others just call to vent their feelings, their frustrations in life,'' Necodemus adds of the migrants, who work as nurses, construction workers, teachers, domestic workers and seafarers.

By accident

Activists like her tapped into the power of radio by accident. In 1997, she had gone on radio and television hoping to seek justice for a Filipino maid in Jordan who came home dead, with suspicious bruises and wounds in her body.

In one radio programme, Necodemus was so swamped with calls and pleas for help by Filipino overseas workers and their families that the station asked her to stay, even if it could not pay her for her time and work.

That show became a regular segment and for three years earned many advertisements for the station that had invited her to host it.

But she says she was disappointed that not a drop of the programme's earnings went to efforts to help migrant workers, 800,000 of whom leave the Philippines every year and make it the largest organised exporter of human labour.

Often, Necodemus' male anchors seemed impervious to the migrant workers' plight. "They would laugh and make jokes about them or call them stupid when they were off the air," she recalls.

Grant for own show

In 2001, Necodemus' Kakammpi managed to get a grant from the Ford Foundation to run its own radio programme.

"We decided to focus on women and reproductive health because 73 percent of our seven to eight million overseas workers are women, who are more vulnerable to abuses especially in some Muslim countries where the status of women is low," says Necodemus.

But she says the one-hour show has other segments, ranging from news relating to migration, dramas about issues confronting women workers, phoned-in stories and anecdotes from listeners, updates on legal cases involving overseas workers and the reading of letters sent in by listeners.

Necodemus hopes the programme reaches more Filipinos, given the fact that radio remains the most popular medium in this country of 80 million people.

The workers' concerns are many, but the more common ones involve problems with fake work contracts, withheld salaries as well as emotional problems resulting from situations such as infidelity.

In this mainly Roman Catholic country, Necodemus adds, the show gets a lot of questions that begin with, "Is it a sin. . . "

Government officials, other activists and analysts, as well as workers and their families are also heard in the programme.

In one programme, for instance, an official from the Philippine Nurses Association stressed the need to have a pre-employment seminar for nurses so they will learn how to scrutinise contracts and have more bargaining power.

Legal or medical help

In another, the teenage daughter of a migrant worker discussed the generational gap she feels with her absentee father.

The programme also provides a helpline where listeners get either legal or medical help or in some cases, psychological assistance. "For instance, when they ask about abortion, we refer them to medical experts because we obviously are not equipped to give advice on this," Necodemus explains.

Given the popularity of the radio programme, Necodemus has also been invited to co-anchor 'Radyo Pilipinas', sponsored by the government's Philippine Information Agency.

This shortwave radio programme allows Filipino workers from Asia, Europe and the Middle East to get the latest news about the Philippines as well as issues involving them.

Wrote Edna, who tunes from Saudi Arabia: "At least I'm able to get some news about the Philippines.''

Because of the programme, Eloina Rebollos says, she found out that she was entitled to compensation after having been displaced during the 1990-91 Gulf War, when she was forced to leave her job as a domestic worker in Kuwait.

For those workers who suffer pangs of homesickness, the sound of host Necodemus' familiar voice can sometimes be therapeutic. ''My voice sounds like an empty can but they say that they're happy to hear me especially when I laugh,'' she quips. ''Filipinos love to laugh, you see.''

It helps a lot, too, that Necodemus speaks very fluent Tagalog, the national tongue. She also knows whereof she speaks, because her husband was an overseas worker for 15 years.

Own experience

''Sometimes the drama is drawn from my own experience. Then someone would call and say, that's similar to my life,'' she recounts.

The programme Women Migrant, You have an Ally, which won second place in the recent AIDS Media Award, has created such a buzz that some producers asked about the possibility of making movies about the lives of migrant workers it has featured.

For now, however, Necodemus says Kakammpi's goal is to see the programme's slot expanded by at least half an hour to 1.5 hours. — AFP