The UAE 76

The Manila Times
Friday, May 29, 2009

EDITORIAL

Seventy-six Filipino workers remain stranded in Ajman Province, the United Arab Emirates, where they were promised work but abandoned by their recruiter since January.

The 76 Filipinos are part of an original group of 137 workers hired as bus drivers by a Philippine-based recruitment firm. Not one has worked since arrival in the UAE but 61 have returned to Manila to recount their experience and to seek compensation.

Their plight dramatizes the continuing power of illegal recruitment and loopholes in the law that encourage spurious hiring and that allow the exploiters of hope to ply their trade with impunity.

The Blas F. Ople Policy Center, a think tank on overseas employment and human trafficking, has taken the cudgels for the drivers and, on its representation, prompted the Senate Committee on Labor and Employment, chaired by Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, to look into the problem.

During the hearing on Monday, former Labor Undersecretary Susan B. Ople, president of the center, described before the Estrada panel the circumstances surrounding the recruitment of the bus drivers and their daily plight since their arrival in the UAE.

The senators learned that the workers were hired by CYM International Services and Placement Agency at prohibitive placement fees. The workers’ financial woes were compounded by their inability to pay the “overstaying fines” for expired visas. Failure to settle the fines, which amount to thousands of pesos, have prevented the drivers from returning to Manila or from seeking other work in the province.

The head of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) told the panel that work on the payment of the fines was in progress. This wasn’t enough for Senator Estrada who ordered OWWA, the Department of Labor and Employment and the Department of Foreign Affairs to develop and implement a contingency plan to get the 76 workers out of the province and out of their misery.

The drivers are living in cramped quarters close to a dumpsite, the workers’ legal counsel informed the committee. No power and running water are available in the shanties, while food is supplied principally by Filipino community leaders. A leading TV network recently filmed and showed the workers’ plight on one of its channels. Pleas from the workers to return to Manila arrive daily, the legal counsel said.

The owner of the recruitment firm has not attended a single hearing, prompting Estrada to issue a subpoena and to recommend cancellation of her passport. The public has not heard her side, but how long should she be given presumption of innocence?

Each day spent in despair by the Dubai 76 is a black mark on the record of the government offices responsible for regulating overseas employment, policing the recruitment business and protecting victims of illegal hiring. We should hope that the Ople Policy Center will continue to nag the authorities and that the Senate Committee on Labor and Employment would shepherd the hearing to a just conclusion and to propose legislation that would increase safeguards for worksite toilers and jobseekers and sanctions for undisciplined recruiters.