Deployment ban to MidEast will do ‘more harm than good’ —HRW
President Rodrigo Duterte's threat to stop the deployment of Filipino workers to the Middle East due to the reported cases of abuse may do "more harm than good," the Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Monday.
"Such a ban would likely do more harm than good, forcing workers to take greater risks to seek overseas employment while cutting off a critical source of income for families in the Philippines," said HRW researcher Rothna Begum in a statement.
Begum said a deployment ban will not end abuses and only push Filipino workers to migrate through illegal means.
"The experience of other countries like Indonesia, that have instituted bans on their nationals similar to that threatened by President Duterte, is that such bans do not end these abuses," she said.
"Instead people desperate to work still migrate, but through unsafe and unregulated channels, leaving the more exposed to abuse and trafficking and making it more difficult to address abuses once they are working in the Middle East," Begum added.
Begum instead urged the Philippine government to advocate for the scrapping of the visa sponsorship system or the kafala, which she said "ties migrant workers to their employers and prohibits them from leaving or changing jobs without their employer’s permission."
"They should also call for better enforcement of labor protections and improved cooperation from Middle East governments to work with the Philippines embassy to help rescue workers in distress and conduct investigations into worker deaths," Begum said.
"I do not want to fight with you. We are poor, we may need your help, but we will not do it at the expense of the dignity of the Filipino," he said.
"And I’m sorry, the Filipinos there, you can all go home," he added.
So far, the Philippine government has suspended the deployment of newly hired OFWs to Kuwait. —Jon Viktor D. Cabuenas/KBK, GMA News
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