MANILA, 4 July — A Saudi delegation will be coming to Manila at the end of the month for bilateral labor talks, Labor Secretary Patricia Sto. Tomas said yesterday.
She said she will be meeting with the Saudi group headed by Labor and Social Affairs Minister Ali ibn Ibrahim Al-Namlah with a view to strengthening labor ties between the two countries.
“Part of the reason why many of our problems occur is because our cultures are very different. That is what we will initially be talking about — how to narrow down these differences so that we have fewer problems,” she said.
“It’s clear that they feel some affinity with us and they want us to be more kindly disposed to them (Saudi Arabian nationals),” she said.
Sto. Tomas was all praises for Saudi Ambassador Mohammed Saleh al-Ghamdi for having “gone out of his way to be particularly helpful.”
She said she was no longer seeking a bilateral agreement, which Saudi Arabia was not amenable to for the reason that the Kingdom wants a uniform policy as regards expatriates from various countries. “It’s hard to balance this because all those countries ask for different things, things you cannot all give. And if you give in to one country, the next will ask why not to them as well,” she explained.
She added: “We will have to be happy with regular bilateral discussions. After all, in these bilateral discussions, there are minutes of the meeting and the minutes of the meeting are binding on both of you. They don’t partake of a formal bilateral agreement but it’s something that you can invoke because they are signed by both countries.”
