New Rules For Hiring Maids: Take It Or Leave It

"If the Philippines can pioneer  unshackling this evil bondage through its very own, the world will be on its feet, then other third-world countries will likely follow suit."

It is as easy as one plus one - if you cannot protect your guest workers then do not invite them to come over. The same is said of the Saudi government's seemingly desperate attempt to get Philippine counterpart to have a change of heart towards the latter's stance on the hiring of Filipino domestic helpers. This early, the Philippine government has stiffened its conditions set on hiring of domestic helpers - which the Saudi government finds absurd - because the prerequisites set by the labor-exporting country do not conform to the whims of the indolent and masochistic culture existent in the Saudi society.

In order for a Saudi family to acquire rights to hire a Filipina domestic helper, the Philippine government sets forth the following criteria:  The basic salary of the worker should be pegged at SR.1,500 - lower than that is deemed illegal and unacceptable. The head of the family should have at least a monthly basic salary of SR.9,000. - to ensure he is capable of paying his 'servant' (the term they label their household helper). And the prospective employer should attach a detailed map of his residence, for easy access of their whereabouts should an abuse is committed against their worker. If you see, the rules constitute protection of the worker but what the Saudi government fears about is that - its citizens are not yet ready to be bound by such rules.

Obviously if the Philippine government holds firm to its stake, the rampant abuses of Filipino domestic helpers in Saudi Arabia will be a thing of the past. And that is what their Saudi counterpart is keen to neutralize - in their favor. If this is the best way to teach Saudis a lesson - moral and diplomatic that is - then the Philippine government should remain firm to its advocacy.

If human rights wathcdogs will have their say,  Saudi Arabia will always be classified as a dangerous country for unskilled workers where there is no assurance of protection given to them . Most of them are household workers who exist at the mercies of their employers. Countless of documented and undocumented cases of abuses happen everyday in all corners of this country. They're lucky if they get to find way to escape from their abusive employers. Some of them have also found their ends here. Scores or sometimes hundreds of these distressed workers crowd temporary shelters inside Consulate in Jeddah and embassy in Riyadh awaiting months or years before being repatriated. And the bad news is - government's fund is slowly drying up for the cost of their subsistence and repatriation.

Acting the role of 'good and desirable' hosts, the Saudi government is not slow to sweet-lemonize the standoff between two governments saying there are domestic helpers from other countries waiting in large numbers offering their services to their nationals. There you go! If so, why bother to get Philippine officials to a dialogue hoping the rules set by them could be bent in mutual favor? The truth is, simple and fair the rules may sound, yet they are not willing to comply with it because they cannot guarantee the safety and protection of the worker inside a Saudi household.

How servants are being treated by them? In most instances, a servant is being enslaved by the whole clan. Her 24-hour day to day existence is offered to her masters. She is on-call even at the most unlikely of hours. She does not take offdays. After she finishes her work in her master's house, she is also being offfered  to serve in another house with the consent of her master. If she is thought to be pretty, she will be locked up in the bathroom by the wife before the husband comes. She could even end up a sex-slave by her male masters. If her masters are also monsters she could get a battering everyday. Even kids join the orgy by showering her with their spittle. ( I don't stereotype all Saudis, but my over a decade of stay in Saudi Arabia could attest to real stories of this kind, they're aplenty you would regret arguing with me.)

If the Philippine government plays its card smartly, I don't think this development is a bane to overseas employment for our household workers. Given that Filipinos are still the most preferred household workers for obvious reasons, good Saudis with penchant for quality skills possessed by Filipinos will be unperturbed by the rules. But those majority that raises the alarm are those inclined to be abusive, financially constraint and wanting  only to 'possess' a slave to flaunt to their ilks. If they cannot afford to give decent pay to their 'slaves' then it's about time that they move their asses off and wake up from their couch and start to declog their arteries because 'owning' a slave comes with responsibilities...and risks.

The astronomical cases of abuses to domestic helpers in general across the Arabian peninsula has been at the forefront of human rights groups' agenda all over the world. Various media and independent entities have documented the atrocities done to these poor individuals and how abusive employers get the luxuries of not being prosecuted for their crimes. From Lebanon and Jordan to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, records of abuses and deaths are dizzying that calls to end this modern-day slavery are mounting. If the Philippines can pioneer  unshackling this evil bondage through its very own, the world will be on its feet, then other third-world countries will likely follow suit. And if this trade persists to exist, it is because better reforms have been put in place. Now I put my stake on the strength of the Philippines' stand. If they stay firm (which I still beg to doubt), then it's about time to bid abusers goodbye, or one more time, "take it or leave it"!

And She Duly Lost Her Cause

"As long as there remain barbaric and sex maniac Arab employers, there will be no dearth of abused victims being raped and murdered."

Just like any domestic helper working  in the Middle East content with a dirt cheap salary, she did not wish to be rich, she just wanted to feed her loved ones, send her kids  to school and help her old parents.  Asria Samad Abdul  a typical housewife, frail and wrinkled by poverty, became a symbol of a failed struggle by hapless domestic helpers in their pursuit of a better life.. She hailed from Maguindanao, the third poorest province in the Philippines,  famous for its two group of people - the bestial and powerful billionaire Ampatuan clans and the poorest of the poor in the land.

In her struggle to escape untold of poverty, Asria Samad landed a job in Kuwait as a domestic helper. Not surprisingly, her employers maltreated her by starving and beating her - enough reason that she fled from them. The next phase of her precarious adventure would later prove to be her last gasp off the noose. The Kuwaiti couple who subsequently took her in had ferociously feasted on her on a daily basis by subjecting her to extreme physical abuse. The indescribable cruelties she suffered from their hands rendered her weaker each day that they decided to throw her in the desert. Asria was too weak but alive when the evil Kuwaiti couple run her over three times to make it appear that she was a victim of a hit and run. (So that proves that even the fiercest soul-less criminals can sometimes be the most stupid too.) Convinced that they got rid of her, they must be celebrating when police was able to track them down. Thursday, July 15 when the body of Asria was found near a horse stables in Kabad, a desert area. But the sleuths did not buy the idea that it was a case of hit and run when only her eyes were without  bruises.

In retrospect, a three-man team of solons led by Rep. Carlos Padilla went  to the Middle East in November last year on a fact-finding mission to see first hand the conditions of OFWs especially the domestic helpers. On their five-city tour that consisted of Riyadh, Jeddah, Amman, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, they got to interview some runaway domestic helpers housed in those shelters and every one of them had a unanimous recommendation to the government, to put a stop to the deployment of domestic helpers in the Middle East. Each distressed runaway had the saddest story to tell them, that they came up with a strong consensus that it was about time the Philippine government  act on it.

The recommendation from the three solons would have gained ground, because there was no bilateral agreements that existed between Middle East countries and the Philippines, insofar as protection of migrant Filipino workers is concerned. Section 4 of the Republic Act 8042 or the Migrant Workers Act of 1995 says, that there must have existing social and labor laws protecting the rights of migrant workers. Rep. Padilla would later hit the government on this, because it keeps on violating its own laws when it cannot ensure the protection of Filipino migrant workers yet aggressive in its  labor export policy.

Another compelling reason according to Padilla why the government has to put an end to the deployment of domestic helpers to the Middle East is, the cost of repatriation of distressed OFWs is too high that it could even cause bankruptcy to the OWWA. It is a fact then that the economy is not projected to suffer (or will not be affected at all) if the government pushes through with the complete ban.

So here we go. If the government is incapable of protecting its exported workers, why not stop exporting the most vulnerable? We know and the government knows that the DHs are the most susceptible to being trafficked, oppressed and abused by their employers. Not to mention those being raped and murdered by their sex maniac employers. I really wanted to hear success stories by our compatriots who worked as domestic helpers to give a bit of rationale (of continually exporting them),  but I could not find one. If there were few in the list, what was the ratio against those who were beaten, starved, raped and went home dead?

Media reports and Human Rights organizations certify that the Middle East is the most dangerous place for domestic helpers. Sans seers and oracles, countless cases of abuses and deaths don't see its end coming in the near future, because the trend is there to stay. So what else are we waiting for? It's a shame that the government has spent more time brainstorming ( as to the new title bestowed on our exported compatriots ) than deciding on their greater good. Hallelujah to them that sit on their thrones for protecting the dignity of our domestic helpers (by upgrading their title)!  Now we can legally and respectfully call them Household Service Workers or HSW and not DH anymore. But here in the Middle East? They will be eternally referred to as "Kadamat" or "Alila" or Servant.

It's still current in my memory how my older sister recounted to me the indignation she suffered at the hands of her recruiter from Bacolod City.  She was offered initially to work in the palace (kuno) for the Sheikhas of Qatar. She was very ecstatic then at the prospect of working in a palace. But when her documents were completed (minus the  ticket), she was told that her profile was liked by a very rich family in Lebanon and that they had no option but to send her to them. "In Lebanon you will be treated with the experience of a lifetime where you can literally walk on the snow, whereas in Qatar, you will  not be allowed to go to the mall nor remove your abayah, you will be a virtual prisoner inside the palace." (They now equated Qatar to hell.) All of us resisted the idea because of reports on some Filipino domestic helpers falling from buildings in Lebanon (like meteorites),  and widespread abuses of domestic helpers, (as evident in the embassy's crowded shelter housing hundreds of distressed runaway). When my sister decided to back out, she was made to pay for the ice cream and lunch the recruiter had earlier ordered in addition to  mouthfuls of profanities. Thank God she did not push through to Lebanon as the war broke out the next year that led to repatriation of thousands of domestic helpers from Lebanon.

Despite  Filipino communities and several Human Rights groups urging the government  to immediately ban the export of domestic helpers in Kuwait in the aftermath of the twin brutal murders of  our compatriots last month, the Philippine government stresses that it is not  placing a ban on deployment of domestic helpers in Kuwait just yet. The DFA was even straightforward in its assessment that placing a ban on domestic helpers in Kuwait is not the solution. So that tells of the wimps in the government how ineffectual and useless are they. All  facts and figures are readily laid out on the table yet they still refuse to act with urgency. Earlier recommendation in November 2009 by the three solons of complete banning did not even stand a chance of deliberation in Congress until it just died in limbo.

We know for a fact that abuses and deaths of our compatriot domestic helpers will not stop unless there is a complete banning of their deployment in the Middle East. As long as there remain barbaric and sex maniac Arab employers, there will be no dearth of abused victims being raped and murdered. The bad news is -  abusive behaviors by these human species have been the way of life here in this part of the world and will never become outdated and it will thrive as long as they propagate. Another bad news is - their cravings for human preys will be satisfied by the enterprising DFA officials, in the form of a fragile poverty-stricken commodity called Filipina domestic helper. Since the government admits its inability to find resolution to the situation, expect that more cases of abuses and murders will fill our primetime appetite in the coming weeks or months, ominously signaling that Asria's cause will be nothing but a 'charge to experience - better luck next time' send - off advice by the Philippine government. Where is the dignity they are advocating when the recipient is already dead?

Another Lonely Christmas

"He has provided for us a mighty Saviour, a descendant of his servant David". -Luke 1:69.

For most of us OFWs in the Middle East, Christmas season comes and goes with less significance--although it is always a much anticipated time of the year.

In a country like Saudi Arabia, where Christmas celebration is strongly discouraged, you don't always get to see Christians especially Filipinos, gather in a festive mode. Christmas parties are normally held behind closed doors. But the good thing is, we Filipinos always find ways to gather to experience its spirit -- albeit in a quieter mode.

This time though, no invitations yet. Probably the problem is the venue. And some old friends have also moved to other parts of the kingdom. Some were on vacation, while others just disappeared.

Strange as it seemed, I received a call yesterday from one of our store managers a Yemeni, greeting me Merry Christmas (in English)! I replied to him jokingly, "I think you only wanted to be invited for a party and get drunk!" And true enough, he also wanted to experience the famous Filipino-style alcoholic indulgence, which I don't really approve of.

What I'm gonna do this Christmas by the way? The 24th and 25th fall on Thursday and Friday. And we naturally take offdays on weekends. Maybe will be shopping for some ingredients for spaghetti or pancit, just for the feel of Nochebuena. I am not really a big fan of carbs, so I guess I may not devour much of them.

But even while I write this post, I already lost my usual zest to write. I feel bored, my eyes fixated on ASAP 09. My mind doesn't cooperate. I just miss Christmas in my hometown. All my siblings will be holding a reunion. Not impossible though, they all live in one island.

The picture above was taken last year, when we were still excited to decorate our living room for Christmas. Those were recycled decors courtesy of our Ramadan window displays. Ironic, right?

And to all my friends and critics, (I'm getting more each day), I wish you all a blessed Christmas! Although we people, tend to forget who is the central figure of Christmas, He who authored the real essence of Christmas never forgets us.

We may find John 3:16 boring and old, but this beautiful verse is timeless, and the very same message that reminds us of God's great gift of salvation, through His son Jesus. We don't have to labor for it nor pay for it, we just accept it because it's a gift, and a gift is free. Ephesians 2:8-9 says," For it is by Grace that you have been saved, not from your own works, so that no man should boast."