Banning OFWs

Something I picked up from the blog of maverick journalist  Raissa Robles:

"Saudis consider maids as part of their furniture", a labor official once told me.

This was what Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Jose Brillantes told me when he was still a Department  of Labor and Employment undersecretary.

He said this to explain why many Saudi employers treat Filipino domestic workers inhumanely and abusively, such as kicking, punching or branding them with a hot iron if they make mistakes or take daily baths; or working them half to death with little rest and food; or sexually abusing them.

I was shocked by his explanation. I could not use it of course because I was then writing for Saudi newspaper Riyadh Daily.

In recent days, amid an announced ban on recruitment of Filipino and Indonesian domestics imposed by the Saudi government starting yesterday July 2, I confirmed from two separate sources that what Brillantes told me years ago was true.

A Muslim ambassador recently shared this startling bit of info: Unknown to us Filipinos, the Saudi government used to stamp on passports of Filipino domestics being deployed to the Kingdom words in Arabic that stated what Brillantes had told me. That the bearer of the passport was a household worker whom the employer could treat in a sub-human manner. Like slaves.

The other instance of confirmation came from news reports following the Saudi government’s beheading of a female Indonesian domestic worker who repeatedly stabbed her Saudi employer to death in January last year after being berated constantly.

Saudi authorities had refused to give Indonesian diplomats access to Ruyati Binti Sapubi because they said she had already confessed to the crime. Indonesia tried to ask for clemency and a chance to defend her in court. But over a week ago, it learned from news reports her head had been chopped off with a sword.

The beheading prompted Salim Said, a former Indonesian diplomat-turned-political analyst, to state bluntly to Joe Cochraine, my fellow correspondent covering Jakarta for South China Morning Post:

In Saudi Arabia, they do not have a tradition of having maids or helpers – their ancient tradition is having slaves. So the mental attitude of their culture is treating their helpers and maids as if they are slaves.

Said even shared the information that when he was Indonesia’s ambassador to Prague, his embassy became a de facto shelter for runaway domestics whose Saudi employers were vacationing in the Czech Republic.

Let's put this in context.

As gleaned above, this blog post came out after Saudi Arabia banned work visas for Filipino domestic workers. As if on cue, various factions in the private sector expressed apprehension over this state of affairs, citing, understandably, concerns over the welfare of the thousands of would-be OFWs who have been suddenly cut off from another chance to work abroad.

However, this turn of events can be looked upon as an opportunity in disguise. What I hope would happen is that the government will see this as it is. 

For years, Saudi Arabia has gotten away with many human rights abuses against domestic helpers and this chronic issue of abuse has not been limited to Filipinos. The article linked above also mentions Indonesia prohibiting its citizens from working as domestic servants in Saudi Arabia after the beheading of a maid.

With this, I believe it is wise for the government to review its policies of exporting low-skill labor to countries with questionable human rights records. In effect, the government should emulate what Indonesia had done and impose prohibitions on the movement of OFWs to countries which put them at risk of violence and abuse.

It will not be easy and it will take a person with tremendous political stamina to stick with this direction despite the initial backlash. But, in the end, it will still be for the benefit of our OFWs and their continued success (and survival) abroad.