Protect abused household workers

Before newly appointed Labor Secretary Bienvenido Laguesma lifts the ban on the deployment of household workers to Saudi Arabia, he may want to look into the abuses committed by Arab employers to their maids.

If complaints from former household helpers to the now defunct Isumbong mo kay Tulfo are any gauge at all, nine out of 10 Saudi employers are abusive.

If Laguesma asked me as the “Isumbong” host, I would recommend a complete, total ban on sending household helpers to Saudi and other Arab countries.

“Isumbong” was a public service program on radio and TV that helped repatriate countless Filipino maids who were abused by their employers in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries. The program, which officially closed on June 30, 2022, was on the air for 31 years.

Complaints against Saudi and other Arab employers ranged from inhumane working conditions – being made to sleep on the floor or in the toilet, deprived of meals or days off – to physical abuse such as beatings and rape.

Cruel Arab employers ran second to abusive policemen in the number of villains or bullies that Isumbong received every day from oppressed citizens. Our office was open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday to Friday.

There was this Pinay whose right eye was blinded after her woman employer rubbed steel wool on her face for a small mistake. She and another maid, an Indonesian, would go rolling down the stairs after being kicked by the husband from the second floor of the apartment her employers lived in. She and the other maid would be made to stand naked under the heat of the sun for hours on end by the husband and wife. The husband, she said, was a general in the Saudi police.

Another came home to her husband in Nueva Ecija with a two-year-old boy in tow, a product of her being raped by her employer. She said she couldn’t report the rape to the Saudi authorities because she was told she would be jailed and caned under strict Saudi laws. All the while she was made to sleep on the floor of the toilet and not given her salary.

Still another complained to us of being punched and kicked in the stomach by the entire family each time she made a mistake; she would vomit and defecate each time.

Add to those stories of woe the plight of more than 30 former runaway maids who came back to the Philippines in batches from Syria last year.

The Pinay maids from Kuwait were able to come home through representations Isumbong made with the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) didn’t know about their plight because they went to Syria via Dubai as tourists. The maids weren’t registered with the POEA.

I came to know about the plight of the maids, who had sought refuge at the Philippine embassy in Damascus, from a report in The Washington Post.

The Philippine ambassador to Syria at the time didn’t care a hoot about the runaway maids who stayed at the embassy basement for several years. The erstwhile runaway maids said the ambassador always partied with handsome Syrians.

My column in another paper about the harrowing experiences of the maids was read by a Filipino-American in Los Angeles, Jefferson “Nino” Lim, who sent P1 million for them.

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The ban on the deployment of Filipino domestic help to Saudi Arabia was made by then Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello.

Bello issued the ban after Saudi Arabia wouldn’t pay the salaries of 9,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), which totaled in the billions of pesos.

The Saudi government previously agreed to pay P4.5 billion in unpaid wages and benefits to the affected OFWs who were repatriated in 2016.

Abuses committed against Filipino domestic workers by a retired Saudi general were among the reasons for the imposition of the deployment ban in November 2021.

My staff and I at the defunct “Isumbong” wondered whether the Saudi general was the same one who would mercilessly make the two maids mentioned above roll down the stairs or order them to go naked under the sun for hours.

If this was the same general, why didn’t the Philippine embassy in Riyadh make representations with Saudi authorities about his abusive behavior? The complaint of the maid who was rendered half blind took place more than a decade ago.

The DOLE and POEA should have acted on the complaint a long time ago, because Isumbong brought it to the attention of the two agencies years ago.

A postscript: Upon my representation, the maid who was rendered half blind received more than P1 million in unpaid salaries and benefits from the National Labor Relations Commission.

If you ask me, that amount is peanuts compared to the hellish experience the maid went through at the hands of her erstwhile Saudi employers.

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If deployment of housemaids can’t be helped in the future, the Department of Migrant Workers should see to it that they are amply protected.

Aside from having applicants for overseas employment undergo seminars and lectures on the culture – customs and traditions – of the country they’re to be deployed, the prospective OFWs should be given the phone numbers of embassies and labor officers they could call when they’re in trouble with their employers.

They should also be informed of their rights as workers. Prospective employers must also be told to respect the rights of OFWs under pain of being reported to the authorities, charged and then prosecuted in their courts.

We should hire local lawyers to act as counsel for OFWs who are either respondents or plaintiffs against their employers.

Lastly, the DFA should stop assigning Muslims as ambassadors to Middle East countries. We know why.