OFW Forum
Jun Concepcion
Ending the continuing physical and sexual abuses of Filipino women across the Middle East doesn’t require rocket science.
Even in the absence of comprehensive empirical data, it is fairly easy to deduce and conclude what should have been clear as daylight to the country’s labor officials.
That the best way to better protect Filipino women is to remove them from harm’s way. Why does the government maintain its policy of deploying Filipino women to the Middle East where most of the horrific abuses are being perpetrated with almost total impunity?
Is the Middle East the only region on earth where Filipino women can take up jobs as domestic helpers?
Compared to the Middle East, hasn’t the Asia Pacific region proven its worth over decades as a much better and most viable alternative in terms of higher salaries and the barest minimum of atrocities committed on Filipino women?
Why are labor officials seemingly turning a blind eye to the elephant in the room? Why aren’t they doing anything to curb deployments of Filipino women to the Middle East, including first-timers and very young ones, to a region where the incidence of all sort of abuses has been historically much higher compared to other parts of the world?
This continuing policy and practice defies logic and even very simple and plain common sense.
After closely tracking OFW developments in the Middle East, the Asia Pacific and other parts of the world for decades, this writer can’t help but arrive at this infuriating and frustrating conclusion: some senior pencil pushers at the Department of Labor and relevant agencies care more for their fat salaries and perks instead of hapless Filipino women scores of whom are wittingly or unwittingly caught in the claws of abusive employers in the Middle East.
For decades, the Kafala system, a scheme originally intended to track foreign workers in the Middle East, has been the root cause of why Filipino women are treated as slaves or animals by abusive employers. But hardly, if anything official or unofficial, is done to mitigate the adverse impact of this Kafala system and as a result, Filipinos everywhere are shocked by horrific physical abuses that female OFWs in Saudi Arabia or Jordan or Qatar reveal from time to time.
So, what is best way to try to end the almost never-ending litany of atrocities of Filipino women in the Middle East? Again, the elephant in the room is right there for everyone to see: why not wind down deployments of Filipino women to the Middle East and redirect them to the Asia Pacific where they are generally treated well and paid much higher salaries?
Despite the absence of reliable empirical data from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration and any other government agency, a combination of Google and my own research tend to indicate that there may be over one million OFWs or Filipinos employed as domestic helpers and in so-called “blue-collar” manual work across Asia. With labor shortages in factories and the aging population in various places across Asia, notably Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan, there will likely be lots of opportunities to source or absorb more workers from the Philippines.
So, why aren’t senior labor officials proactively directing OFW deployments from the Middle East to the Asia Pacific?
Hong Kong, for instance, currently hosts about 220,000 Filipino domestic helpers as per the Philippine consulate estimate as of early last year. They earn a minimum monthly salary of about P30,000 and enjoy excellent medical services from public hospitals in this city. More importantly, OFWs in Hong Kong enjoy adequate protection and care under this city’s laws – a vital element often not available to battered Filipino women across the Middle East.
Taiwan hosts 154,000 OFWs as of April 2019, according to its Directorate-General of Budget data, while Singapore hosts over 100,000 Filipino domestic helpers though their monthly average salary of about P20,000 is way below that of their counterparts in Hong Kong.
Google research indicates about 825,000 Filipinos in Hong Kong, the bulk of whom are presumably at work in different professions, including trained caregivers with average monthly salaries of about P80,000.
China hosts an estimated thousands of Filipinos mostly engaged in illegal work as domestic helpers and English teachers in Shanghai and in other cities in the absence of official arrangements for Filipinos to work there legally as teachers and helpers.
Based on the foregoing, there are certainly concrete ways and means of helping Filipinos take up jobs away from harm’s way in the Middle East. Plain and simple, redirecting them to various places in the Asia Pacific.
Making representations with governments across the Asia Pacific for the entry of Filipino works should not be impossible to achieve. They are more safe and secure in their places of work in the region and compensated better.
Clearly, it doesn’t take rocket science to end the litany of abuses of Filipino women in the Middle East.
Contact this writer at [email protected]