Two stranded household service workers at the Bahay Kalinga shelter are appealing to the authorities to speed up their cases so that they can go home.

A fellow woman worker who was repatriated from the Kingdom on Tuesday revealed this here recently to Arab News. She identified the two workers as Evangeline Bonita, 33, and Dhalia Asuero, 32, who have been staying at the Bahay Kalinga for seven and two months respectively.

“Both of them have police cases being handled by the Assistance to Nationals Section of the Philippine Embassy,” the worker said. She also thanked Arab News for highlighting her case, which helped her go home.

She said Bonita and Asuero are from the provinces of Leyte in Visayas and Bukidnon in Mindanao, respectively. Both have families. They ran away from allegedly abusive employers.

“Apart from the alleged harassment, Bonita claimed she was also hurt by the grown-up son of her employer,” she told Arab News. She said Bonita claimed that her employer had not paid her for five months. She was supposed to receive SR1,000 monthly, below the salary agreed recently in a labor pact signed by the Philippines and Saudi Arabia governments.

She said that Asuero has been asked to pay her employer SR20,000 that was spent to recruit her before she can get an exit visa. “But she doesn’t have money to pay and was told to either go back to her employer or seek employment elsewhere to raise the amount,” she said.

She said the workers at the shelter are not allowed to go out and work. “Once you go there, you have to stay except when following up on your case at the Philippine Embassy and Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO),” she said.

The worker, who comes from Mindanao, said: “I only stayed for a few days at the Bahay Kalinga but Bonita and Asuero have been there for months. I hope the Philippine embassy expedites their cases.”