Agencies to stop sending OFWs to Saudi Arabia

MANILA, Philippines - Deployment of Filipino contract workers to Saudi Arabia is expected to drop next month as hundreds of licensed recruitment agencies vowed to stop recruiting workers for the country unless the "unified contract" is postponed or abolished by the Ministry of Interior of Saudi Arabia.

This was the threat made by Victor Fernandez, president of The Philippine Association of Service Exporters, Inc (PASEI), as he urged his 750-strong members to refrain from signing the unified contract with members of the Saudi National Recruitment Committee (Sanarcom).

Fernandez said under the new scheme, PASEI will no longer be able to deal directly with their employers in Saudi Arabia but through a Saudi recruitment agency that is a member of Sanarcom.

Fernandez said the new contract is “anomalous and totally unfair" to the Filipino workers since they will not be given the opportunity to seek the help of the Philippine labor representative and disallows the services of mediators or any parties in settling disputes or disagreements of Filipino workers with their employers.

Lito Soriano, renowned recruitment consultant of the industry, and Ezekiel Alunen, former member of the governing board of the Philippine Overseas Emploment Agencies (POEA), both agreed that the agreement will allow Arab-owned local recruitment agencies to grab the Saudi labor market with their ties to Sanarcom.

Soriano and Alunen said many local agencies have partnered with Arab nationalities through marriages or as business partners but most of these agencies are mere "dummies"

Soriano, an agency owner deploying mostly nurses to Saudi Arabian military hospitals, said the scheme only puts another layer into the recruitment process that will only add to the recruitment cost of the local agency or the Saudi employer.

He said the workers will eventually have to bear the additional costs involved in the services of the Sanarcom agency.

Fernandez said the entire recruitment industry composed of associations like PASEI, FAME (Federated Association of Manpower Exporters), ASPRO (agencies dealing with professionals), OPAP (Overseas Placement Association of the Philippines) and other industry associations are united in opposing this new imposition being pushed by the Sanarcom through the Council of Saudi Chamber of Commerce and Industry with the approval of the Ministry of Interior.

Industry associations rejected the new arrangement, with most of them threatening to leave the Saudi labor market and concentrate their deployment will other oil-rich Middle East countries if the Saudi embassy persists in implementing the said unified contract.

DOLE has disclosed that there are 400,000 job vacancies abroad and locally. The POEA has pending job orders for 150,000 skilled workers in the Middle East that have not been filled up by local agencies. The current fill-up ratio of agencies is only 40 percent for their job orders due the lack of skilled workers and insufficient training programs.

Soriano said most of the former Saudi OFWs are experiencing a “Saudi employment fatigue" and are slowly moving to other labor markets in the Middle East like Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, which are experiencing a construction boom and are offering higher salaries and better benefits to their workers. - GMANews.TV

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