2 ‘maltreated’ Pinoy workers awaiting help in Hail, Saudi Arabia

Two Filipino household workers in Hail, Saudi Arabia, are stuck there awaiting assistance nearly a year after being allegedly duped by a recruitment agency in Manila.

Arab News reported that the Philippine Overseas Labor Office was having difficulties solving the case as the two were deployed to Saudi Arabia as skilled workers by an agency that had since closed shop.

The report quoted a POLO official as saying that there were no counterpart agencies for skilled workers in Saudi Arabia.

“There is no counterpart agency in the Kingdom for skilled workers,” the unnamed official was quoted in the report as saying. “We could have approached the agency and asked it to call the employer about the case.”

Both female workers were deployed on April 16, 2014 as dressmakers, but were made to work as housemaids for less than SR1,500 in different households.

One of the OFW's said they had 17-hour work days despite illness and lack of rest, while both complained of working for 15 days in a row without rest.

POLO is scheduled to ask labor officials in Hail to investigate the case and intervene on the workers' behalf. —Rie Takumi/KBK, GMA News

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