Philippine Labor Secretary Erlinda Dimapilis-Baldoz will pay a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia next month at the invitation of Labor Minister Adel Fakeih.

It marks the first time that Baldoz visits the Kingdom since she took over as labor secretary in 2010.

“She will come to the Kingdom to hold talks with her Saudi counterpart regarding the bilateral labor agreement between the Philippines and Saudi Arabia,” Labor Attache Alex A. Padaen of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Jeddah (Jeddah POLO) told Arab News yesterday.

Padaen said that the visit is “extremely beneficial to both countries so that controversial issues could be ironed out.”

He added: “The Philippine government has given the green signal for local agencies to start the recruitment of Filipino household service workers (HSWs) but there are issues that need to be addressed.”

These need to be discussed during the visit of Baldoz, Padaen said, and whatever agreement to be reached will be incorporated in the bilateral agreement.

There are labor issues on both sides that have to be settled. For HSWs, particularly housemaids, the issue of salary remains controversial.

The Philippine side had demanded for a minimum salary of $ 400 and compliance with this will be monitored by requiring Saudi employees to open a bank account for their HSWs. This will be discussed during the meeting.

He said the Saudi recruitment agencies will take care of it the issue of protection of HSWs..

“This is why the Philippine government had given the green signal for them to start recruiting HSWs,” he said.

Baldoz is a lawyer who rose from the ranks. She was a practicing lawyer when she joined the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE).

She had earlier received two scholarships. One is the Colombo Plan scholarship in Australia and the other is a US Agency for International Development (USAID) scholarship at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.