Stop deploying maids to Kuwait and everywhere else

It is not enough that we stop deploying OFWs to Kuwait. We should stop sending maids anywhere and everywhere in the whole world. If we need to uphold the dignity of our women, protect them from all forms of abuses, maltreatment, and insults, let us recall all our DHs and retrain them for better jobs here and abroad. Ninety percent of all the problems concerning OFWs involve rape, suicide, murder, and harassment against Filipina maids. Talk of the rape and malicious prosecution against Sarah Balabagan. The execution of Flor Contemplacion due to the mysterious death of Delia Maga. The alleged injustice committed against Jane Veloso in Malaysia and Indonesia. The seven deaths and suicides in Kuwait, as mentioned by the president. I hasten to add that Jakatia Pawa was executed in Kuwait last year after supposed unfair charges and conviction.

Since the time I worked as Labor attaché to Kuwait, Malaysia, and Taiwan, it has always been my position that OFWs are too overqualified for the position of domestic helpers or maids. They should be deployed as restaurant workers, hotel attendants, office clerks, hospital employees, factory workers, store assistants, and even lady guards, beauticians and dressmakers, but never as maids. I have nothing derogatory or degrading to say about maids. What I think about is that the officials of the Philippine Embassy, and the POLO (Philippine Overseas Labor Offices), including the ambassador, consul general, consuls, and the Labor attachés and the welfare officers cannot fully protect the maids because they are working inside the private domains of their masters.

There are hundreds of thousands of Filipina maids in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and even in Taiwan. Let us recall them and deploy them to better jobs with much better terms and conditions of employment Even if we call them household service workers or caretakers, cooks, laundrywomen, or babysitters, they are all confined inside the houses of their masters with long, long hours of work, and they are very vulnerable to abuse and maltreatment. I know whereof I speak and I write. I worked for nine years as both DOLE Undersecretary for Workers’ Protection and as Labor attaché to countries with high deployment of domestic helpers. I saw their sufferings and pains with my own eyes. I have documents to prove all that I say. I have personal knowledge of the atrocities inflicted against them.

If the president really wants to be remembered by history as the disruptive leader (the one who disrupted the injustices against our people), let this be a landmark decision, a milestone policy shift. It is high time for the Philippines to stop being called the number one supplier of maids who are made to suffer in dirty, difficult, dangerous, degrading, and deceptive jobs.

Only the recruiters are making millions of dollars out of this modern-day slave trade. The Philippines suffers because families are broken, marriages are shattered, and the children have turned to drugs, crime, and immoralities. Dysfunctional families driven by absentee mothers are destroying the moral fiber of the country and eroding the very foundation of our society and nation. Let us bite the bullet and make this very bold and unprecedented decision. Only President Duterte can do it.