MANILA, 23 October 2006 — The Philippines' new envoy to Saudi Arabia is now 72 years old but when he assumes his post in Riyadh very soon, he intends to spend a lot of time meeting with Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) instead of just staying inside his office.

“At the embassy I don’t intend to sit in my office cubicle. I will go around and talk to the workers asking them if they have been attended to. This way, the worker feels good because he is important,” Ambassador Antonio Villamor said in an interview with Arab News last week.

“I will take a more direct hand in attending to these OFWs,” he said, adding that such a practice will make sure the embassy staff will be working “because the boss is watching and so they themselves will feel good.”

“When morale is high, productivity is also high,” said Villamor, whose nomination as envoy to Saudi Arabia was confirmed by the Commission on Appointments in Manila only two weeks ago.

Consul General Nestor N. Padalhin, the current chargé d’affaires at the embassy, earlier said Villamor will assume his post as soon as the necessary paperwork are completed.

Villamor said he “intends to continue with the spadework that has been started by my predecessors” and to “push for more protection for our people.”

He said he also intends to make full use of back channel connections to help OFWs in distress.

But he said he would also continually pester Filipinos in the Kingdom to abide by the laws of the host government to avoid getting in trouble. “We have to pay more attention to these Filipinos who tend to break the laws of the host country,” he said.

Reducing the number of avoidable violations, he said, would free the embassy’s manpower and financial resources for the really distressed, such as those workers who are abused by their employers.

Asked what he meant by “avoidable violations,” Villamor noted that not a small number of Filipinos have been jailed and deported for drinking or making liquor, gambling, going with men or women other then their legal spouse.

In a report to the home office in Manila last month, the embassy said a total of 256 Filipinos, including 147 males and 109 females, were in 11 different jails in Riyadh as well as the Central and Eastern regions of the Kingdom. The figure does not include those in the Western Region, which is under the jurisdiction of the Philippine Consulate General in Jeddah.

Most of those in jail were being punished for alcohol— and drug-related offenses, immorality, gambling (cockfighting and other forms of gambling), embezzlement and forgery, according to the report.

Villamor said the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has sought royal pardon again for those in jail, just as the government had done in the past.

He was said to be part of the team that worked for the release of hundreds of OFWs early this year, most of whom were officially released last May on orders of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah during the state visit of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo to the Kingdom.

“But we cannot always depend on the kindness of the king and the royal family. We also have to keep our kababayans (compatriots) from misbehaving,” Villamor told Arab News.

He said a regular orientation or re-orientation on Saudi culture could be very helpful to remind Filipinos in the Kingdom what they can and cannot do.

“Embassy officials (not just me) should have a regular dialogue with the Filipino community to remind them (of the forbidden things),” he said. “That is why I intend to encourage my staff at their levels to develop their own dialogues with the community. When you are always in touch with the associations, it helps.”

Villamor was yanked out of retirement to serve as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, in place of Ambassador Bahnarim A. Guinomla, who is now ambassador to Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Villamor was consul general in Hong Kong from 1990 to 1994, and he had also previously served in various capacities at the foreign missions in Tokyo, Guam and Micronesia.

He is no stranger to Saudi Arabia, having served as consul at the embassy in Jeddah before the seat of the Saudi government was moved to Riyadh.

Villamor said his wife, Rosa Maria Barrera, co-founded in 1982 the Philippine School of Saudi Arabia in Jeddah, the first Filipino school in the Kingdom. He said this was during the time of then Ambassador Kokoy Romualdez. “My wife taught English at the International School and together with a math teacher at the IS, they put up the school for the children of the Filipino bankers working in Saudi Arabia,” he said.

The school was later renamed to the International Philippine School in Jeddah (IPSJ), and became the biggest Filipino overseas school with an average yearly enrollment of 1,200 over the past years, before it was reduced to its pathetic state by perennial infighting among parents and teachers.