February 10, 2022
LABOR Secretary Silvestre Bello 3rd said on Wednesday that the deployment ban on household service workers (HSWs) and construction workers to Saudi Arabia will remain until it has complied with the demand of the Philippine government for the fair treatment and protection of Filipino workers and the settlement of P4.5 billion in back wages and benefits of some 10,000 Filipinos.
“Until they are settled, I don’t think I have any valid reason to resume deployment. I don’t want our workers to suffer the same fate,” Bello said in a virtual briefing.
“I want to ensure that when they go there, they will be treated fairly and given what is due them. I want them to pay the P4.5 billion which has been pending for the past five years,” he added.
A Saudi official promised to pay the amount last December, but Bello said only a technical working group arrived in the Philippines to discuss the settlement.
Bello said this was a clear deviation from what was agreed upon during the sidelines of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue in Dubai wherein the Saudi labor minister vowed to pay the P4.6 billion.
“Those claims had been lying idle for more than four years now despite a Saudi court ruling, which is already final and executory in favor of the OFWs (overseas Filipino workers),” he said.
The ban was imposed in response to the maltreatment and physical abuse suffered by five Filipino domestic workers who were under the employ of a retired Saudi general.
The five women were repatriated through the effort of the Labor department. Consequently, the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency discovered that the Saudi general and his family were still able to hire Filipino household helpers despite the string of complaints filed against them dating back to 2019.
POEA Administrator Bernard Olalia said the retired general used different employer names and non-specific addresses when securing new HSWs contracts.