Most of the Philippine embassy and labor officials are acting like a tourists, not as public servants.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia – Migrante-Middle East, an alliance of Overseas Filipino workers, today slammed the Philippine Embassy officials in Riyadh and Consular officials in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia for not even acknowledging several cases that have been endorsed by the group’s rights and welfare officers.
“We have been endorsing several cases of distress OFWs through emails and calls from the RP concerned officials at the Philippine embassy in Riyadh, but these were not even acknowledge,” said John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle regional coordinator.
Monterona said for the past months they have been re-sending case referrals, twice and even third reminders, but still no reply from the concerned RP embassy officials.
He further said “when we called consular and labor and welfare officials on their mobile phones, the usual reply to us is that they have already submitted a report to the DFA-Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA), or to DoLE and that they are not allowed to give any information.”
Various Migrante chapters in the Middle East have been receiving request for assistance from distress OFWs to an average of 7 to ten cases daily.
In Saudi Arabia alone, it averages 5 cases daily, aside from the cases that have been referred to us by the families in the Philippines thru Migrante International-Philippine office.
Most of these cases are abused and maltreated domestic workers leading to rescue them from their abusive employers.
Monterona said this is the reason why Migrante case officers along with the victims have to come to the Philippine embassy for a case dialog to follow the updates of the cases that have been endorsed to the embassy, “otherwise we would not know if embassy officials are properly attending on cases we have endorsed to them,” he averred.
“Sad to say that what our distress OFWs are getting is lip service from Embassy officials who are in fact have the obligation to provide assistance to distress OFWs without dilly-dallying,” Monterona added.
“We are urging Pres. Aquino to do the ‘cleaning’ himself by institutionalizing an effective ‘recall’ system of inept and arrogant Embassy and consular officials abroad especially the various post in the Middle-East in line with his order to all concerned government agencies to attend OFWs woes and concerns,” Monterona ended. # # #
Written by:
John Leonard Monterona
Migrante-Middle regional coordinator
email: migranteme@gmail.com
1 Comment
I agree with you that these inept officials must be recall by the President. They have not done their work. Primarily they were there in the embassy and the consulate to help and protect their citizens. Their role is to give assistance and not to sleep on the requested cases of all OFW. More so they have to be more pro-active in dealing with the flight of these filipino workers. As i read different posting of report from your end, it justifies my daughter present situation.
My daughter arrived in Jeddah last June 2010 as Registered Nurse, All along she knows that she has to work and stay in Jeddah. After a day she was flown to Khamis and work in the hospital there. She discovered that all of them were having deductions of more than 500 SR monthly, (Part VI chapter 1 article 92 Saudi Labor Law) including those in Jeddah. They reason out why they have to be deducted when there was none was stipulated in their signed contract in Manila. The employer never gave them any explanation and as they investigate, they found out that other employees have the same predicament as they are. They cannot do anything because once they complained, their employer took it personal and those who made the complaint suffer retaliation by not giving work schedule.
Now my daughter has been brought back to Jeddah, unfortunately she was trained in Khamis for two weeks as a laboratory personnel and now she is doing this kind of work in jeddah which is not her expertise nor her course of study. ( Chapter 2 part III article 38 Saudi Labor Law) She cannot make a complained because of what I’ve already mentioned. Another thing, her iqama until now was not given to her although she was able to confirmed that it is already in khamis.
This, if we have somebody in the embassy or in the consulate where this kind of violation and other matters would be addressed confidentially so that our workers would not suffered these kind of treatment from their employer.