While President Duterte’s decision to immediately repatriate abused overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Kuwait and to ban further deployment of workers to the Middle East country was at first look commendable, it still leaves questions that previous administrations have also largely ignored.
The President made the twin moves following the discovery of the body of 29-year-old Filipino domestic worker Joanna Demafelis in a freezer in the basement of his employer’s apartment in Kuwait. It turned out the body had been there for more than a year and autopsy showed signs of torture and strangulation.
The pressure exerted on the Kuwaiti government by Duterte’s moves eventually led to the arrest of the couple suspected in Demafelis’ murder in Damascus, Syria where Demafelis’ Lebanese boss, Nader Essam Assaf, and his Syrian wife had fled a year earlier. The move to ban deployment to Kuwait also forced the Gulf nation to extend amnesty to hundreds of Filipino workers staying there illegally. It also enabled thousands of OFWs long wanting to return home to avail of free flights to Manila courtesy of Cebu Pacific and the Philippine Airlines.
However, just like the previous administrations’ failure to provide a long-term plan to slow down or put a stop to the country’s dependence on the export of labor, Duterte seems satisfied with band-aid solutions to the many problems brought about by the exodus of millions of Filipinos overseas.
Lately, complaints of abuse of domestic helpers by their employers in the Middle East have been notably increasing, especially in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. There are more than 750,000 Filipino maids working in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, where Migrante International said they often face legalized discrimination, beatings and sexual abuse.
“The women frequently live in isolation, forbidden even to telephone their families. If they file a legal claim against their employer, they can be deported or imprisoned on trumped-up charges. They are treated like modern slaves,” said Maita Santiago, secretary-general of Migrante International, a rights group for Philippine workers. “When workers are in distress, the government doesn’t stand up for their rights for fear of the markets of foreign countries closing to Filipino workers.”
In fact, a study conducted by the Commission on Filipinos Overseas showed that 70 percent of Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia have reported physical or psychological abuse.
One Filipino maid in Saudi Arabia, for example, complained that she was forced to work from 5 a.m. to midnight, verbally and sometimes physically abused for the smallest mistake, and never given enough to eat. In her first six months, she was paid a total of only $200 for a job that she had to pay $300 to an employment agency in the Philippines. She eventually ran away, but her employers complained that she had stolen money and watches from their vault. Despite the lack of evidence and witnesses, she spent 13 months in jail.
Another Filipina maid complained that when she was deemed too slow to bring coffee to her employer, the latter poured boiling water on her back. Others are burned with hot iron while others are beaten with whips for minor mistakes. Still many others are arrested and jailed for alleged crimes and denied due process.
Reports of abusive employers, slave-like working conditions and sometimes sexual abuse by employers are not confined, however, to the Middle East countries. Similar abuses have been reported in Singapore and Hong Kong, two other countries where there are thousands of Filipina domestic workers.
And yet, despite rampant reports of employer abuse and slave-like working conditions in these countries, tens of thousands of Filipinas leave the Philippines to become domestic workers abroad. For lack of better-paying jobs in the Philippines, many Filipinas, including some teachers and other college graduates, risk being abused, jailed, face danger in strife-torn areas, and even lose their lives to enable them to support their families back home.
The maid who was jailed in Saudi Arabia, for example, was looking to find another job as a maid, “just not in Saudi Arabia.” Many of the Filipino workers who have so far been repatriated from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia will most probably be lining up in a recruitment agency for jobs elsewhere, most probably also in the Middle East, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other countries where domestic workers are in demand.
In repatriating the workers from Kuwait, Duterte promised to find them jobs in China and other countries, surely mostly again as domestic workers because many of these workers have no skills that can demand better pay and better working conditions abroad. And what’s the assurance that they won’t be abused and exploited in China when Filipina maids have also complained of abuses by Chinese employers in Singapore and Hong Kong?
Why can’t the government offer them skills training or jobs in their homeland instead of looking for other countries that can offer them low-paying jobs? Why is it that after almost 50 years of exporting cheap labor abroad, this country that boasts of the second highest economic growth rate in Asia continues to rely on export of labor for such growth? Why hasn’t there been any long-term plan to get the country out of this situation?
The Philippines gets around $20 billion in remittances every year, which comprise about 10 to 14 percent of the country’s GDP. Last year, these OFWs and other overseas Filipinos sent a total of $22 billion in remittances to the country, which helped fuel the Philippine economy, as it has done for about 50 years now since the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos launched its overseas employment program to help generate foreign reserves and find employment for millions of jobless Filipinos.
Because the Philippine government, like the OFWs’ families, has become dependent on the remittances of these workers, it tends to overlook the fact that both the Filipino worker abroad and their families in the homeland are suffering from this labor phenomenon.
Tens of thousands of Filipino workers, especially those deployed as domestic helpers and factory workers are exploited, and physically and sexually abused. Those that are not abused or exploited have to overcome loneliness and other problems brought about by their prolonged separation from their families.
Similarly, the spouse and children left behind are also saddled with emotional and psychological issues spawned by the long separation. It is not uncommon in the Philippines to see children growing up without their father or mother, or sometimes both.
The overseas Filipino workers program was initiated by then Labor Secretary Blas F. Ople in the 1970s as a temporary remedy to the unemployment problem. Most countries transitioning from an agricultural-based economy to an industrialized one had to deploy workers abroad at one time or another. Taiwan and South Korea, for example, used to be two of the biggest exporters of labor. But with industrialization, their citizens now stay at home and travel only as tourists or businessmen.
But while China and India, the two biggest labor exporters, have transitioned to become two of the strongest economies in the world, the Philippines, which is the third biggest labor exporter, remains poor and unable to provide jobs to its population.
Unlad Kabayan, a non-profit based in the Philippines, said “There is a definite cycle of migration: Filipino workers go abroad, earn a little, return to the Philippines, use up the savings, and then work abroad again. The challenge is to break this cycle, and provide an alternative to migration.”
Indeed, the government has to start refocusing its priorities to stop this “culture of migration” and keep its workers home, so that they don’t have to suffer the indignities of working for foreigners and their children don’t have to grow up without their parents.
But lulled into complacency by the sweet scent of the dollar, our leaders would rather keep the status quo, never mind what ills it would bring in the future.
There was a time when the country prided itself of being a major exporters of products such as tobacco, sugar and copra. Now, it seems happy to be just an exporter of labor. Will the Duterte administration be any different from the past governments that boasted of sizeable economic growth powered mainly by its OFWs’ blood, sweat and tears?
Not likely.
(valabelgas@aol.com)