OFWs still being sent to Iraq--migrant group, recruiters
By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net
First Posted 13:16:00 04/07/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Despite the ban in the deployment of Filipino workers to war-torn Iraq, they are still being sent there for contractors of the United States government, a migrant group said Monday.
Recruiters’ consultant Emmanuel Geslani confirmed Migrante’s claim, saying, “The hiring is direct through illegal recruitment syndicates [with] Singapore or Cebu [as] jump-off points.”
Previously, government officials said Filipino workers in Jordan, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates were being recruited to work in Iraq.
John Leonard Monterona, Migrante’s Middle East regional coordinator, expressed alarm that more overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) would be recruited to work in Iraq after the US State Department recently renewed its contract with Blackwater, the US-based contractor providing security to American diplomats and personnel in Iraq.
“We are…raising this concern as we have received reports that there are still some recruitment agencies in the Philippines which are continuously sending OFWs in Iraq serving [as] construction [workers], drivers, and security [personnel] in the facilities that the US military builds in Iraq and [in] US military camps such as Camp Anaconda and Camp Victory, using Kuwait and UAE the entry points,” he said in a statement.
“Continued sending of OFWs to Iraq, either legal or illegal, obviously endangers our fellow OFWs’ lives,” he said.
In a previous Senate inquiry, Special Envoy to the Middle East Roy Cimatu estimated that some 4,500 OFWs were working inside US military camps in Iraq.
Migrante’s Monterona said the number might be higher now as private contractors like Blackwater offer “fat” employment contracts, with insurance benefits of $35,000 and a local insurance of P200,000.
Monterona thus criticized the government, particularly the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), for “sleeping” on its job of monitoring the deployment of OFWs to Iraq.
He suggested that POEA should require private recruitment agencies to submit their foreign employers’ nature of business and other circumstances. He said these should then be certified by officials of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office and the Philippine embassy assigned to the host country.
“The POEA should [also] prosecute its officials…who are found to be conniving with recruitment agencies that are still sending OFWs to Iraq despite the government imposed deployment ban,” he said.
Monterona said some POEA officials release Overseas Employment Certificates (OECs), a requirement for outbound Filipino workers, in exchange for money. “As we have heard, ‘pera pera lang iyan [money is all that’s needed]’ to acquire an OEC from POEA,” he said.
Aside from Iraq, the Philippines also bans deployment of Filipino workers to Afghanistan, Lebanon, and Nigeria.
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