Bello asks Duterte to consider deployment ban to Saudi Arabia over unpaid wages of OFWs

By JOVILAND RITA, GMA News Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III has asked President Rodrigo Duterte to impose a deployment ban to Saudi Arabia if the wages owed by the employers to overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) remain unsettled. At the Laging Handa briefing on Thursday, Bello said the unpaid salaries of more than 9,000 OFWs had reached P4.6 billion. “I sent a memorandum to the President requesting him permission to consider the deployment ban to KSA (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) kung hindi nila mabayaran yung pera (if they cannot pay the amount),” he said. Bello also said that he instructed the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to study the matter. In 2016, around 11,000 OFWs in Saudi Arabia were not paid their salaries for one to two years, he recalled. Bello said that Duterte authorized him to repatriate the OFWs. “Before doing that, we authorized a lawyer to pursue the claims of our OFWs,” he said. “That was 2016. It is now 2021. Mayroon nang desisyon. Hindi pa rin binabayaran," he said. (There was already a decision. It has not been paid yet.) In May this year, the Labor department temporarily suspended the deployment of OFWs to the oil-rich kingdom amid reports that OFWs were being required by their employers/foreign recruitment agencies to shoulder the costs of the health and safety protocol for COVID-19 and insurance coverage premium upon their entry in Saudi Arabia. The deployment ban was immediately lifted after Bello received official communication from the Saudi government that foreign employers and agencies would shoulder the costs of institutional quarantine and other COVID-19 protocols upon arrival. — VBL, GMA News

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