JEDDAH/MANILA, 21 February 2008 — Workers stranded at the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah yesterday asked Philippine officials to find a diplomatic solution and get them repatriated.
Many of the workers had their heads shaved and greeted visitors to the consulate with a mock coffin to dramatize their demand.
Painted in black color on the coffin were the words, “The future of our families lies on this coffin. Send us Home, Not to Jail!”
Carlos Rebutar, a spokesman for the stranded workers, said: “The coffin symbolizes the dangers we are facing now. It also symbolizes the death of our family and loved ones as we languish here losing our remaining hope of being repatriated.”
While acknowledging the efforts undertaken by consulate officials to help stranded workers, leaders of the group and the support organization Migrante said it’s time for the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh and Consulate in Jeddah to find creative solutions.
In a press statement, A.M. Ociones, chairman of Migrante KSA, said: “The ‘legal deportation process’ is a sham, because it endangers our compatriots who left their employers due to various cases of abuse, maltreatment and contract violations.”
The workers said they were resorting to the symbolic protest because the solution Consul General Ezzedin Tago had opted to take was proving to be futile.
As of yesterday, the total number of workers seeking urgent repatriation was placed at 198, with more than 70 staying inside the consulate compound.
Most of the workers fled their employers in the Eastern Province and Riyadh either because of maltreatment, non-payment of their wages, and other abuses and violations of their contract.
Consulate officials have said the workers were lured by a syndicate of “fixers” to go to Jeddah where they can be repatriated via the “backdoor” for a fee. The workers were made to gather under the Kandarah Bridge and wait for immigration officials to pick them up and deport them.
To the workers’ dismay, immigration officials have ignored them reportedly because they did not pass through the “proper channel.”
In a dialogue three weeks ago, Consul General Tago, explained to the workers that the consulate can help the workers only if they pass through the legal process.
Under this process the worker is made to identify his employer, and the consulate or immigration officials would notify the employer and ask if they want to provide an exit visa for the worker.
Fernando Francisco, one of the leaders of the stranded, said he and his colleagues softened up last week after consulate officials promised that they won’t be placed in danger.
But the group started backing out when some of the 54 women and 24 men who were picked up by the Immigration Police through the so-called ‘due process’ in Feb. 10 were returned to their employers.
“We agreed to submit to the legal process but see what happened?” an angry Francisco said yesterday.
According to Migrante, one man was confirmed “returned” to his employer and about 20 were told that they would also be sent back to their employers.
Migrante also said 13 men were transferred to the Deportation Facility in Riyadh in handcuffs and were dumped inside a cell with at least 100 other men of different nationalities.
“This is not what has been promised us when they (consulate officials) were convincing us to sign up for due process,” Ociones yesterday quoted one of the 13 men as saying.
Consul General Tago was unavailable for comment as he was out of the Kingdom for an official mission.
Consul Jose Jacob confirmed that some of the workers were sent back to Riyadh. Jacob said the consulate has the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh to intervene. “We wanted to repatriate them as much as we can but the problem is we don’t have control of the process...,” he said.
Jacob rejected suggestions that the consulate help the workers exit via the so-called “backdoor.”
“We will not secure their repatriation through fraudulent means. They came here as a workers, they will be repatriated as workers,” he said.
Vice Consul Lorenzo Jungco, the new head of the Assistance to National Section in Jeddah, said he led a team to talk with the head of the deportation area at the Jeddah airport and requested that no workers be sent back to their employers.
Ambassador Antonio P. Villamor, in an interview by phone from Riyadh, said the stranded workers were in the deportation area and the immigration officials will ask the employers to provide the exit visas for their workers if they have no criminal records.
The head of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Riyadh, Labor Attaché Resty dela Fuente, said he immediately went to see the workers when they arrived at the Riyadh deportation area on Monday night.
“We will take care of them and we will continue assisting them. They are okay inside and we just hope everything will go smoothly so that they will be repatriated soon,” he said, adding that Ambassador Villamor was also doing his best to help solve the crisis.
Migrante insisted said the officials step up the level of intervention.
“We call on the government therefore, to opt for the more arduous diplomatic or government-to-government solution,” Ociones said.
“It is the solution that the government has been avoiding all this time for whatever reason and the only solution that can send the ‘stranded’ home... now,” he said in a press statement.
Ociones said one of the workers identified as Noel Farrales “is already very weak and might collapse anytime due to the heat inside the deportation cell.”
The workers said if the consulate had managed to send home 925 overstayers and stranded workers last year, there’s no reason it could to do it again with the smaller number this time.
Last year, most of the workers who were repatriated almost single-handedly by then Consul General Pendosina N. Lomondot were also from Riyadh and the Eastern Province.
