Lessons from Kuwait

President Duterte’s offer of a free flight to any interested Filipino migrant worker in Kuwait to return home and his order banning work deployment of Filipinos to Kuwait has resulted once again in the Philippines getting a fair share of top space in international news.

It has, at best, sent a message to countries like Kuwait that the Philippines is not going to just sit out the lengthy and exasperating discussions in world forums of the need for more laws to protect migrant workers from abuse.

For decades, multiple international organizations dealing with migrant workers’ rights have been trying to hammer out treatises to strengthen migrant worker laws on a global basis and with individual countries, especially those that have weak legislation.

But progress on these have been unbearably slow – and each day, there are multiple cases of abuse that happen, majority of which are not reported. If complaints are ever filed, chances are that justice will take a long time to be served, if at all.

And today, with the rise of populism in many countries that take in migrant workers, migrant rights are even more endangered at the community level and even at the arena of local and national policy and law making. Violation of human rights of migrant workers happens even in the best of developed economies.

Favorite work destination

The Philippines reportedly accounts for about eight percent of the world’s documented migrant working population. It is not clear, however, how many are undocumented, working without proper work permits and bear expired passports.

In Kuwait, loosely based on the expected take up on the President’s offer for a free airplane fare home, there should be about 10,000 of these undocumented Filipino workers. This would represent a sizeable fraction of the 276,000 Filipino workers currently registered to work in the Middle Eastern country.

Kuwait is one of the favorite work destinations of Filipinos overseas, and together with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, account for more than half of the overseas Filipinos working abroad as documented by the Philippine Statistics Authority.

Kuwait government reforms

While the recent deaths of Filipinas working in Kuwait have triggered a local outrage over the inhuman treatment of our migrant workers in this Middle East country, Human Rights Watch has acknowledged it to be one of the more advanced Gulf nations that take concrete steps to improve migrant rights.

It has, for example, set a minimum wage for domestic workers of $200 a month, and continues to introduce reforms in its kafala or sponsorship system, which limits a migrant worker’s legal residence and valid immigration status to an employer.

Domestic workers also are given, by law, a weekly day off, 30 days of annual paid leave, a 12-hour working day with rest, and an end-of-service benefit of one month a year at the end of the contract, among others.

More recently, its interior ministry issued a clarification that employers must pay overtime wages for domestic workers. The Kuwait government has also established a shelter for domestic workers.

Law enforcement problem

But like many destination countries of migrant workers, law enforcement is the problem. Human Rights Watch noted that migrant workers remain vulnerable to abuse, forced labor, and deportation for minor infractions including traffic violations and “absconding” from an employer.

In the first four months of 2016, for example, Kuwait authorities were reported to have deported 14,400 migrants.

About 65 percent of Kuwait’s current population of 4.2 million is composed of migrant workers and an expatriate community. In the case of 29-year-old Joanna Demafelis, whose body was recovered in a freezer, her employer was a Lebanese residing in Kuwait who was on the law enforcer’s watch list for falsifying checks.

Demafelis had been reported missing last year, but tracking down her whereabouts had become a challenge because the employer was on the run, and the Kuwaiti agency that recruited her had already closed down.

Smarter citizens of the world

The horror of Demafelis’ murder, as well as President Duterte’s strongman reaction has once again put the plight of migrant working class, especially domestic workers, to the fore. But it does not guarantee a speedy resolution to the problem.

Diplomacy channels between the Philippines and Kuwait are being strained, with the Kuwaiti government issuing equally strong statements about having been put on the spot in blatant disregard of the fact that there are currently 170,000 Filipinos in Kuwait who “live a decent life.”

With the ban on work deployment to Kuwait made clear to take effect only on new recruitments, the remaining overseas Filipinos – some of who have raised their families for years, some decades in this Middle East country – can breathe a sigh of relief.

With over 10 million working abroad, either on long term contracts or as migrant workers, Filipinos have become recognized as resilient citizens of the world who can adapt relatively well in a foreign environment. But it is still a new world away from home where uncertainties abound.

What happened with Kuwait does not stop our more needy countrymen from trying to get an overseas job that will pay more than what they would get in their land of birth.

If there any lessons that we should take seriously, it is that we should be more careful of where we send our countrymen for jobs abroad, how we respond to their needs when they work abroad, and empower them to become smarter citizens of the world.

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