OFWs in the Middle East Continue to Suffer Maltreatment

Another batch of Overseas Filipino Workers had arrived from the Middle East yesterday and brought with them sad experiences of working abroad as household helpers. The seven women shared the same story of inhuman treatment of physical and mental abuse, enforced hunger and non payment of salary.

The women who worked in Abu Dhabi as maids were subjected to the daily abuse of their employers. They were forced to work until the wee hours and only allowed to sleep from 2 in the early morning and waking up at 5 am. Meal is only once a day 24/7, depending on the mood of the abusive employers.

The agony is unbearable that the seven OFWs escaped from their sadistic employers and sought shelter from the recruitment agency and Philippine embassy in Abu Dhabi. One of the women who went to the agency-rather than getting help from the staff, who happened to be a fellow Filipino-was verbally and physically abused instead.

With the help of Mr. Manny Villar, who is the president of the Philippine senate, the abused OFWs were able to get home. Scarred for life, the seven women arrived in the Philippines tearfully recounted their sad experiences as workers in foreign land which mirrors the abject poverty and the lack of employment opportunity in their own country.

This is only part of the countless sad stories of OFWs working in the Middle East. In a TV report yesterday night (local time), two young women Overseas Filipino Workers are currently confined in a hospital in Dubai. The two Filipinas have suffered the worst kind of mental and physical torture committed by their employers.

The Filipinas, age 21 and 27 became the human punching bags of their mentally deranged and brutal employers. Both women suffered injuries, cuts, broken bones, old and new scars, swollen limbs and hematomas all over their bodies. According to the report, the violence had become a ritual or habit which actually occurs every hour of the day. It was ruthless, cruel and without mercy; a torture of unbearable experience.

The victims are now undergoing treatment in a Dubai hospital and it would take some time before the two completely recovers from the indignity and torture they have gone through. Meanwhile, the ruthless employers, a police officer and his Egyptian wife were arrested and eventually face charges.

These stories of OFWs will not stop not unless the Philippine government bans the deployment of their nationals, mostly women, to the Middle East. Since March 2008, batches of OFWs had arrived from Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. All of them escaped from their abusive employers.

And there are hundreds more being held in deportation centers, informal holding centers and in Philippine embassies located in all the countries mentioned. All OFWs are asking for immediate assistance and for possible repatriation. But unfortunately, the Philippine government is not doing enough.

I myself can attest to the inutile of the people in government especially those stationed in Philippine embassies and labor offices in foreign lands. They cannot be trusted when OFWs encounter problems in their workplaces. I am a former OFW in Taiwan and I should know because I encountered one which was too reluctant to help distressed OFWs.