This news came just one day before the Guardian published a report about Lila, a Nepalese who was trafficked into slavery and committed suicide in Lebanon.

Originally posted on Ethiopian Suicides.

Speaking with residents of Indramayu, West Java, the minister, Muhaimin Iskandar stated that “[The dispatch of migrant workers to] Jordan is under a threat of permanent closure because of low salaries and inadequate social guarantees”.

The government is also imposing a moratorium on the dispatch of migrant workers to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Syria. In addition, the dispatch of workers to Yemen has been suspended due to political unrest.

Since much of Indonesia’s national income derives from remittances, however, the government have been careful to advise would-be migrant workers to seek work elsewhere.

“Given the moratorium, we ask PJTKI [migrant worker placement firms] to try to switch the dispatch of migrant workers, for instance, from Saudi Arabia to Malaysia to which a moratorium on the dispatch of Indonesian migrant workers has just been lifted,” he said.

“Don`t force yourself to seek overseas employment merely because of strong desire or economic pressure”.

Read the full article from Antara News here.

Currently, Nepalese are amongst the least well-paid in the Gulf, earning from approximately $125-$200 per month. Nepal wants to change that; raising wages has several benefits for both host countries and migrants, which may be why Gulf governments are more responsive to salary-related appeals than to other migrant issues. Higher salaries attract more skilled workers, and also allow for migrants to live more comfortably while still apportioning a percentage of their income for remittances – which means they can afford to to spend more money in their host countries, thereby avoiding the ‘siphoning of wealth’ that has some Gulf nations worried.

Raises are also critical to improving the migrant experience. Higher salaries may be one of the most straightforward (and more readily attainable) measures to counterbalance other difficulties migrants face, which for Nepalese in particular include serious debt from job placement fees. The migrant situation in the Gulf is much more than an economic issue, but wages are a telling reflection of the value society holds for the occupations they fill. Higher wages can detract from the perception of migrants as cheap, disposable units of labor and instead cement migrants’ worth in both their employer’s eyes and their own.

One week today, on November 2, 2011, the Philippines banned labor deployment to 41 migrant-hostile countries owing to their failure to pass certification standards set by the amended Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995. The move was taken as an unambiguous pledge not to continue sending Filipino citizens, like lambs to the slaughter, to countries that do not provide adequate legal protection for migrant workers. While the feasibility of the ban’s implementation has been widely questioned over the past week, the government’s strong language and concrete action in support of migrant rights was a welcome change even as lip service. The ban would have gone into effect in less than one week, on Nov. 17.

Oh, wait, never mind.

Earlier today, in a shameless about-face, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) withdrew the 41 negative certifications that served as the basis for the ban despite the fact that a mere twenty-four hours prior, Carlos Cao, Chief of the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA), had announced to national news outlets that the list of banned countries was slated to increase after further review of an additional 31 flagged countries. Lack of coordination between the two government offices has created considerable confusion over who initiated the ban process and is being sourced as one motive force for the DFA to override POEA’s earlier decision to officially tag countries as unacceptable for Filipino workers.

The DFA and POEA are fully synchronized however in their treatment of Filipino workers as commodities. In press statements announcing the news, representatives of both offices use the language of dehumanization and refer to host nations as “receiving countries”.

The DFA intends to reassess the list of non-compliant states over the next 90 days. Although some labor rights advocates have expressed optimism that the deferral of the ban and loosened timeframe for review will allow for a more thorough and accurate certification process, additions, rather than subtractions from the list of non-compliants, seem doubtful. From the sounds of it, “revise” actually means whittle down: there have already been official hints at removing some negatively certified countries such as Libya, where rampant human trafficking and illegal recruitment of Filipino workers are known to occur unabated.

Over the three-month review process, during which the DFA will reclassify nations that comply with labor standards, iron out interagency cooperation, and liaise with “stakeholders” such as the recruitment industry, the government has not proposed any alternative plans to safeguard against the abuse of Filipino workers in the interim. There has been no talk of a media campaign advising prospective migrants against work in the countries under certification review and still no new program to expand opportunities for the un- and underemployed in the Philippines.

Ominously, the skepticism articulated in last week’s postings on Migrant-Rights.org seem to be warranted.

The push for nations to adhere to the Migrant Worker’s Act is part of the Philippine’s larger aim to secure social and legal rights for its citizens abroad. Bans are an attractive tool for governments seeking to reduce migrants mistreatment because of a host country’s generally exclusionary legal framework; migrant workers tend to face apathy at best, and further hostility at worst, when they attempt to report mistreatment. A migrant’s virtually extralegal existence makes it difficult for either oversight organizations or their own government agencies to advocate on their behalf.

Despite their apparent comprehensive nature, bans are only a temporary and imperfect fix; nations whose GDPs rely largely on migrant remittances face serious difficulties in attempting to balance human rights and prosperity. Citizens desperate for work may illegally enter banned countries and face even less protection. Such complications may tempt nations to lift bans before conditions have actually improved. The inclusion of Saudi Arabia in Indonesia’s tentative list of worker-approved nations, despite its very recent ban and continued rights violations, illustrates this equivocation clearly. Saudi Arabia’s approved status has prompted the Indonesian Migrant Trade Union to question the government’s method of evaluation, especially as more migrant-friendly nations have been excluded from the list.

Effective bans require careful planning and execution. East Java is implementing training and technical programs over a period of years to ease the transition. The Philippines is establishing clear standards,with the the conditions of the Migrant Worker’s Act as its foundation, that nations must meet. The commitment of governments to these standards will largely determine ultimate effectiveness of the bans in improving migrant conditions.

Though the report was published in 2011, cases of of  abuse have been documented since at least 2007; inhabitable dormitories, 13-18 hour work days, unfair wages, physical mistreatment, and sexual exploitation all frequent the worker’s accusations. A Sri Lankan factory manager, Anil Santha, lies at the center of these abuses. Santha is accused of a range of misconduct including rape and withholding pay, a pattern of exploitation which he sustained by threatening to deport workers if they complained.  Though workers overcame the barrier of fear he constructed, the response of the authorities and upper management was less than effective;  after a factory wide strike in 2010, Anil was sent away only to resume terrorizing workers one month later. On June 18, Anil was arrested after an employee recounted her rape before a prosecutor. He was released only three days later. 

The Jordanian labor ministry’s failure to protect the rights of these workers is consistent with its wider migrant practices; for example, in 2007, Bangladeshi men were banned from working in Jordan after attempting to pursue their rights as prescribed under the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement. The ministry continues to fail to enforce the Free Trade Agreement’s labor clause.; Better Works Jordan, a monitoring group largely sponsored the by the U.S. government, has placed the factory on its “Golden List” of institutes in full compliances with labor laws for the past five years. Given that complaints have been registered against the factory for several years, workers accuse the ministry of taking bribes from the factory. The Jordanian government’s reactions discourage workers to report mistreatment, as they risk their lives and employment only be subjected to apathy and retaliatory abuse. 

As migrant workers’ voices are effectively silenced by ineffective ministries and oversight organizations, change must come from those in a position of power – most visibly,  the distributors who purchase Classic Factory’s clothing.  Retailers who source from the factory include Wal-mart, Hanes, and Macy’s. Though monitors are periodically sent to the factories, they only speak with workers selected and primed by the management. Students in Chicago have recognized the need for these brands to take a stronger stand against these inhumane and illegal conditions. The students distribute fliers near retailer stores to encourage consumers to pressure companies to comply with the law and end the chronic exploitation.  

A Daily Star article sheds light on the campaign objectives which are to raise awareness of “the often dangerous conditions which foreign domestic workers endure in Lebanon and to urge authorities to implement the relevant legislation needed to protect them.”

The campaign features a TV ad which can also be found on you tube and dozens of billboard posters which fill the city in an attempt to attract as much attention as possible. It reads, “Don’t push her to commit your crime: toward legal protection for domestic workers in Lebanon.”

In their press release, KAFA pointed out basic inalniebale rights that are denied off the majority of workers in Lebanon such as the right to rest, travel and communicate and the right to keep their own private documents, such as passports.

Kudos to Kafa and to all other organistions in Lebanon working on advocacy laws that protect domestic workers from all cycles of abuse and violence they are constantly vulernable to.

The workers were stranded and jobless after having left their employers. They cited a range of reasons for absconding, including delayed or unpaid wages, physical and verbal abuse and long hours, according to this press release from the Philippine Embassy in Bahrain.

Philippine Ambassador to Bahrain Corazon Yap-Bahjin accompanied the returning workers.

The workers had been staying at the Philippine Embassy’s halfway house in Manama for four months while Embassy officials secured their exit visas.

According to Yap Bahjin, the fact that it was the month of Ramadan meant that employers were inclined to give more lenient treatment to the workers.

“In the spirit of Ramadan, we took advantage of the employers’ spirit of charity and we convinced them not to charge for the deployment cost,” the ambassador said (see this article in The Manila Bulletin)

Emergency repatriations of distressed workers are a routine occurrence for Philippine embassies in the Middle East.  Between 8.6 and 11 million Philippinos – or 11% of the population – work overseas, according to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, with many of these working as domestics and blue collar workers in the Middle East.

Lebanon, for example, saw a spate of repatriations in late 2010/early 2010:

“Mass repatriations normally occur twice a year—mid–year and in December,” said Salome Mendoza, assistant labor attaché of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office. “It’s only as we approached 2011 that they’ve happened successively.”

(from ABS-CBN News 02/02/2011)

The succession of repatriations of Philippine nationals has been just one grim indicator of how poor conditions for migrant workers in the region remain.

The article spoke of the story of Malagasy Abeline Baholiarisoa who spent 15 traumatic years of slave-like work under the Lebanese sponsorship system until she was able to go back home with 84 other women after her government chartered a plane to evacuate then early this year.

Abeline refers to her life in Lebanon as “a living hell” and described the eating and sleeping conditions and how they (in reference to herself and the other maid enslaved with her in the same house) did not even find the time to clean themselves.

Abeline, who agreed to come to Lebanon on the premises that (as the contract she signed dictated) she will be working as a nurse for a limited number of hours/day and for 800$/month for a 3 year contract found herself (like many others) instead working as a “maid” for 24 hours/ day and for less than 160/month. She used to pay her employer for the bits and pieces of food she ate.

The article also moved on to tackle “suicide” patterns and the constantly uninvestigated death cases. It then mentions stories of women who returned in coffins to Madagascar with missing organs. This was a very important eye opening report. If serious and tangible action on the ground is not going to be taken by government and people alike after this, I am not quite optimistic that any other time will inspire them to. If this does not move people enough, nothing else will.

When will Abelinea and other stop falling in those well-organized traps and when will we work on exposing the mafias behind this?