I was shocked to read this week, during the official visit of Philippine Secretary of Labor Patricia Santo Tomas to Saudi Arabia, that OFWs were too much into a culture of feeling kawawa, that the Saudi government had agreed to fund pre-departure seminars for Pinoy maids before they went abroad, and that 52 Saudi companies, some of whom had not paid their Pinoy workers on time or had deducted money from their salaries, had received a special award from DOLE for hiring Filipinos!
Oh how I missed the tough talking Nieves Confesor when I read these unfortunate pieces of news! Confesor may have been forced to resign over the execution of Flor Contemplacion by the Singapore government, but at least under her tenure the minimum age for maids deployed to the Gulf was raised to 25, errant Saudi employers were not rewarded for being irresponsible, and the plight of stranded OFWs was taken seriously and not belittled.
It was my colleague Edgar Cadano of Saudi Gazette who managed to collate all of the above amazing statements into one article this week about Sto. Tomas’ visit. Despite all this depressing news, someone tried to put a positive spin on Cadano’s story by putting the following headline on it: “8,000 jobs await Filipino workers in Kingdom.” Indeed.
It is a fact that the Philippines as a labor exporting nation is in a weaker position when it comes to negotiating better terms for its workers with labor-importing countries such as Saudi Arabia. This doesn’t mean that the Philippine government should give in to all of the demands of Saudi recruiters. Showing some backbone and acting tough can many times go a long way in getting better working conditions and salaries for Filipino workers.
Take Filipino maids for example. They are the most vulnerable of Filipino workers in the Kingdom because of the nature of their work. Still not covered by the Saudi labor law, maids in the Kingdom live-in with their employers and are thus sometimes virtually on-call 24-hours a day. It is also common for many maids here to never get a weekly day off from work. Apart from overwork, they are also sometimes exposed to being molested by male family members and physically abused by the women in the household.
To help cut down the number of abused maids, whose number had swelled the runaway centers for maids at Philippine missions in Riyadh and Jeddah, Confesor had the minimum age of maids deployed here raised to 25. That, plus a host of other checks and requirements angered Saudi recruiters who were encountering many roadblocks in hiring Filipino maids.
The Saudi recruiters retaliated by threatening to cut back on the overall number of Filipinos they hire every year to work here. They also allegedly threatened to slow down the issuing of work visas at the Saudi Embassy in Manila. With up to 800,000 Filipinos already working in the Kingdom, the Philippine government couldn’t risk upsetting such an essential source of work for OFWs and eventually caved-in to Saudi pressure: The age restriction on maids was quietly lifted near the end of President Fidel Ramos’ term in 1997.
Instead of just funding a martial arts course for Filipino maids being sent to work in the Kingdom, the Saudi government should immediately extend the protections afforded by the Saudi Labor Law to include housemaids. This would go a long way in protecting them by officially codifying how many hours a day they are allowed to work, would entitle them to at least one full day off from work every week, and would set workplace conditions. Maids should also receive mandatory health and life insurance coverage.
Of the 800,000 Filipinos working in the Kingdom, Sto. Tomas said that around 4,000 had problems, of which 400 were really serious. “We should understand our rights and know where to go. I think we should start getting off this thing that we are pitiful. Hindi tayo kawawa,” the labor secretary was quoted as saying.
While I agree in theory with the secretary, I also have to disagree with her since Saudi Arabia poses exceptional challenges to all foreign workers, not just Filipino ones. To begin with, any worker who doesn’t speak Arabic is at an immediate disadvantage vis-à-vis his employer. All government work here is done in Arabic, and all court proceedings are done in that language. Second, many employers use dishonest methods to try and pressure their disgruntled employees not to file cases against them in the labor courts. Finally, the slowness of labor courts in delivering final judgments works against foreign workers, who without any job or income cannot hang around for a year in the Kingdom waiting for a legal decision. This is where employers use their strong-arm tactics and get disgruntled employees to sign quit-claim documents that say the employee gives up forever the right to sue the company for money or any other reason. Is this fair? I don’t think so.
Most Filipinos I know do not want to feel kawawa, but when they are in trouble in this country, far away from their families and loved ones, it’s easy to feel kawawa. It is in this context that I feel Sto. Tomas’ comments were really uncalled for and mean-spirited. The Philippine government should be alarmed that they have 4,000 of their citizens in trouble in the Kingdom. When you juxtapose this number to the total number of OFWs in the Kingdom, it only serves to trivialize the suffering of the 4,000 OFWs. Sto. Tomas should have said that 4,000 OFWs in distress were 4,000 too many and that the government was concerned with them.
Many Filipinos see a troubling shift in attitude of the Philippine government concerning overseas employment. Under Ramos the attitude was that the Philippine economy would improve and that deployment of OFWs would start to decline by 2000. Of course, the Asian financial meltdown of 1997 scrapped that idea, and now President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo openly tells OFWs to stay abroad as there are not enough jobs back home! I used to think this a more realistic attitude to have (after all when was the Philippine economy really going to ever recover?), but now feel it is creating an idea that OFWs will be around for a very long time.
Ding Bagasao, chairman of the Economic Resource Center for Overseas Filipinos (www.ercof.org) had these interesting comments on Sto. Tomas’ visit to Saudi Arabia:
“Our country has been in overseas employment for 30 years now, and we still have to see a serious move from government to think along the lines of addressing the structural causes that trigger forced migration. Not only the reintegration part, but also serious policy reform on the higher levels, that will harness the developmental potential of migration the way other countries have.
Filipino migrant groups are already trying to show the way and moving in that direction, and it is disheartening that government has to be on the listening, not on the leading end. If government officials are no where near this kind of thinking and keep on this obsession for politics, I think OFWs will remain overseas, always looking for greener pastures on the other side of the pond and until we lose our identity.”
