DFA: PH to stop putting up OFW shelters in Kuwait if number of runaways would be lessened --- By GISELLE OMBAY, GMA Integrated News

The Philippines will stop setting up more shelters for distressed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Kuwait if the number of those fleeing their employers would lessen, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Tuesday. DFA Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega said this in an interview on ANC when asked if removing the shelters in Kuwait is non-negotiable as far as the Philippine government is concerned. “It’s non-negotiable in a sense that we have to operate them because there are runaways. What is negotiable is, definitely, not to put up more because we don’t want to see shelters sprouting,” he said. “But for us not to put up more, we have to have less runaways,” he added. De Vega pointed out that more than 500 OFWs were being sheltered by DFA before, with the embassy estimating that one out of 400 OFWs in Kuwait are considered runaways. He said this number is higher compared to other Middle East countries. Despite this, he said that the DFA, along with the Department of Migrant Workers, considers the repatriation of more than 600 OFWs from Kuwait as a “positive development.” “It is a positive development because those 600 or so, including 353 who flew just this weekend from Kuwait, had been waiting for months and months and that was an issue between the Philippines and Kuwait — why are we sheltering so many workers, instead of allowing them or using the Kuwaiti system? It showed that Kuwait is capable of and willing to issue exit permits,” he said. With this, he said the number of Filipinos staying in shelters has gone down, with only slightly over a hundred of them remaining there. In May, the Kuwaiti government suspended all new visas for OFWs “indefinitely” due to the Philippines’ reported violations of their bilateral labor agreement signed in 2018. Among the violations, the Kuwaiti Interior Ministry said, are housing workers in shelters, searching for runaways without involving state institutions, communicating with Kuwaiti citizens without permission from authorities, and pressuring Kuwaiti employers to add clauses to employment contracts. The ban came three months after Manila suspended its deployment of household service workers to Kuwait due to cases of abuse, including the killing of Filipina household worker Jullebee Ranara. Ranara's body was found burned in the middle of a desert in Kuwait and was reportedly raped and impregnated by the suspect, the 17-year-old son of her employer. —KBK, GMA Integrated News

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