Unified contract 'unfair, biased' - RP recruiters

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine-based recruitment agencies have threatened to stop recruiting Filipino construction workers to work in Saudi Arabia unless it abolishes a unified contract.

Online news site Arabian Business reported Sunday that the Philippine Association of Service Exporters said it will not allow its 750 members to sign the unified contract.

Pasei president Victor Fernandez questioned the Saudi National Recruitment Committee members (Sanarcom), which bars them from dealing directly with Saudi employers.

He branded as "biased and unfair" the Sanarcom contract, which forces them to go through a Saudi recruitment agency that is an existing member of Sanarcom.

Under the contract, a worker cannot 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.

At present, a worker's contract goes through the Philippines overseas labor office. If the unified contract is accepted, Sanarcom will do the verification of the worker's contract.

"This is highly objectionable to us as Sanarcom is not a government body, but an association of private recruitment companies. The unified contract is seeking to create a middleman between the worker and the employer and puts into place a brokering system which is unacceptable," the Arabian Business quoted a Pasei representative as saying.

Industry associations rejected the new arrangement and most of them said that if the contract is implemented, Filipino recruitment agencies will disassociate themselves from the Saudi Arabian labor market.

They will instead concentrate their deployment to other countries in the Middle East such as the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman.

The common consensus within the industry is that one of the options is to stop sending Filipino workers to Saudi Arabia.

"Currently, there are 1 million Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia in various categories. I believe that the unified contract was originally proposed for domestic helpers and not for workers in other categories," said the Pasei spokesperson.

The Philippine Embassy in Riyadh had received no information about the unified contract from either the Saudi Interior ministry or Pasei.

The deployment of overseas Filipino workers is expected to drop next month. - GMANews.TV

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