Group hits envoy’s ‘statement’ vs runaway OFWs in Jordan

MANILA, Philippines - A coalition of migrant advocacy groups assailed the reported statement of Philippine Ambassador to Jordan Julius Torres that the existence of refuge centers in the said Southwest Asian country had emboldened overseas Filipino workers (OFW) to escape from their employers.

Carmelita Nuqui, president of the Philippine Migrants Rights Watch (PMRW) told reporters last Tuesday that “the ambassador does not know what he is saying."

In a television documentary aired on May 25 and 31, Torres was quoted as saying that the “presence of FWRCs (Filipino Workers Resource Centers) probably make OFWs more inclined to run away from their employers, confident that somehow, someone will provide shelter for them."

Nuqui said Torres’s statement was unfair to OFWs who were forced to leave the country in the hope of providing their families a better future, but ended up being exploited and abused.

“To publicly induce people to believe that the presence of FWRCs in Jordan serves as an incentive for OFWs to run to the center for minor excuses and complaints against their employers is totally unfair," she said in a letter of protest sent by the PMRW to the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) last June.

In response to the PMRW’s complaint, Esteban Conejos Jr, DFA undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs, said in a letter dated July 1 that Torres did not deny having issued the statement. But Conejos said the ambassador never insinuated that FWRCs be abolished altogether.

According to Conejos, Torres was well aware that the centers served as “safe havens" for abused workers and that his comment was merely “taken out of context."

The DFA said that the ambassador’s interview in the TV documentary lasted more than thirty minutes, but only 30 seconds of it was aired.

Conejos assured migrant groups that DFA officials were doing their “best" in protecting the rights of OFWs. - Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV

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