RIYADH, 2 September 2004 — Ambassador Bahnarim Guinomla has said the charges that he was “inutile” and “clueless” in the case of distressed Filipinos in the Kingdom were not only unfair but also insulting.

“It doesn’t seem good that people say I have no feeling at all for Filipino workers who are being harassed, being abused, being maltreated,” Guinomla said during a dinner meeting he called for a select group of community leaders at his residence on Saturday to explain his side.

With him were Minister Mariano Dumia, Vice Consuls Germinia Usudan and Romulo Victor Israel Jr., and Labor Attaché Manuel Roldan.

Guinomla recently came under fire from Migrante International and some community leaders in Riyadh following the death of Erna Franco, a domestic helper from Pampanga province, from severe beating.

Migrante’s demand for Guinomla’s recall prodded some community leaders in Riyadh during their Kapihan forum last week for the embassy to tell the “real score.”

They expressed concern that the embassy was showing signs of being clueless of what was happening to OFWs in the Kingdom.

Kapihan participants, however, said Migrante’s demands were too rash and they would conduct an investigation to give the ambassador and his staff a chance to explain the case of Franco and similar cases during another forum. The purpose of the investigation, they said, was to come up with workable solutions to similar cases.

Suspicions about the embassy officials’ being “clueless” were apparently sparked by Guinomla inability to comment right away on media’s query oabout Franco’s case.

Embassy Staff

In his meeting on Saturday with other community leaders, Ambassador Guinomla said he was not able to comment to media right away because he was in Yemen on the day Franco was brought to hospital.

But it did not mean the embassy was not doing anything, he said, because his staff staff work right away on cases that are reported to the embassy.

It was Vice Consul Israel who had been earlier quoted in media reports as saying Franco was brought by her male employer to the Riyadh Central Hospital for treatment from severe beating. She did not survive, though.

According to Israel’s report, two women, a Saudi and a Moroccan, have been taken by police for investigation in connection with Franco’s death.

Migrante had said Franco’s death spoke ill of Guinomla performance in protecting Filipino workers in the Kingdom. It noted that Franco’s death closely followed the June 26 death of Milagrina Guinacaran, another OFW employed as a domestic help in Riyadh.

Guinacaran died in her hometown of Pamplona in Cagayan province, northern Philippines, five days after she returned home from Riyadh allegedly following severe beating from her employers.

A report provided to Arab News by the Philippine Embassy’s Assistance to Nationals Section (ANS) said that the embassy had no prior knowledge of Guinacaran’s case until the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Manila sent a fax message to Labor Attaché Roldan.

The embassy then requested the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila on July 20 to obtain a copy of the autopsy report from OWWA to support the filing of a note with Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Aggressive Staff

Guinomla explained that his function as head of mission includes political, economic, and cultural diplomacies, which means he has to move around.

“But I assure you that we are going to ask local authorities to conduct a full extensive investigation and I have directed my staff to be more aggressive in following up these cases,” Guinomla told his guests, who were mostly convenors of the International Coalition for Overseas Filipinos Voting Rights (ICOFVR) and e-Lagda.

One of the e-Lagda convenors, Alfred Ganapin, said they are also for a more active embassy staff but cautioned against expecting too much. “By all means let us support any move to recall corrupt and incompetent foreign service officials and staff but let us also be fair,” Ganapin said.

“We should ask first if there is really any way to stop abuses from happening anywhere in the Kingdom anytime despite the existence of laws to protect workers? Unless an ambassador is an omnipresent superman who is able to stop the beating of a domestic worker in a secluded room in a house north of Riyadh and then save another worker from bullies in a factory in the industrial area, then the demand for his recall is tenuous whenever such cases do happen,” he said.

Mike Bolos expressed his sympathy with the predicament the ambassador is currently undergoing.

“It is a thankless job, it’s never-ending (issues) and all of these are unavoidable,” added Mike Bolos, another community leader actively involve in helping distressed OFWs as well as in OFW advocacies.

He said accurate and correct information can always be obtained “if that’s what we want to find. Like our group, whose members do not necessarily see each other everyday, but we know what’s really happening.”

Rashid Fabricante of Pusong Mamon Task Force suggested that it is high time that the Filipino community deserves to know the best side of the mission, “without going for a media blitzkrieg, through balanced and transparent reporting.”

“But there are considerations, like you cannot release to media the details of a rape case if the victim herself and her relatives do not want her story to be told. There are distressed workers who don’t want their identity revealed for security considerations,” he said.

Richard Bautista, president of Kapatiran sa Gitnang Silangan (KGS), a Riyadh-based OFW organization affiliated with Migrante International, he said he was personally against the recall. “Bilang organisasyon, responsibilidad ng Migrante na proteksiyunan ang interes ng biktima at ng pamilya mismo (as an organization, it’s Migrante’s responsibility to protect the interest of victims and their families,)” he said in a telephone interview.