Palace: Deployment ban to Kuwait stays despite arrest of Demafelis’ employers


By VIRGIL LOPEZ, GMA News
The Philippines has no plans of lifting the ban on deployment of newly hired workers to Kuwait following the arrest of employers of Joanna Demafelis, the OFW whose brutal death pushed President Rodrigo Duterte to impose such policy.
"As of now, the deployment ban stays because the latest statement on this made by the President was when he visited the wake of Joanna, and he said that not only must they be apprehended, they must be punished," Duterte's spokesman, Harry Roque, said at a press briefing in Malacañang on Monday.
Last week, authorities in the Middle East separately arrested the employers of 29-year-old Demafelis suspected to have been involved in her killing.
Nader Essam Assaf, a Lebanese national, and his wife Mona, a Syrian, had been the subject of an INTERPOL manhunt after Kuwaiti authorities discovered early this month the battered body of Demafelis inside a freezer in the couple’s abandoned apartment unit more than a year after her family reported her missing.
Acting on the President's directive, the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation against Demafelis' recruiters, the Our Lady of Mt Carmel Global E-Human Resources, Incorporated. The recruitment agency was reportedly shutdown in 2016.
"He wanted the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation) to question the recruiters actually. Because under our scheme, the local recruiters are actually—ultimately liable for what happens to the Filipino deployed by the agencies for overseas. So that’s what the President wants to find out," Roque said.
"But if they will not appear, then they will of course—they could be taken into custody for investigation. But let’s see if they will voluntarily appear," he added.
Duterte said the government is also doing an audit to find out the places where OFWs are deployed and what countries have records of abuses. —KBK, GMA News

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