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MANILA, Philippines?At least 137 Filipino bus drivers are stranded in Dubai and asking the government to help repatriate and give them justice, a labor policy group said Monday.
In a statement, the Blas F. Ople Policy Center also called on the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to investigate and, if possible, suspend the license of CYM International Services and Placement Agency Inc., the agency that recruited the drivers, and its counterpart in Dubai, Al Toomoh Technical Services.
?The sheer number of victims involved constitutes an act of economic sabotage by this licensed agency,? said former labor undersecretary Susan Ople, who heads the center named after her father. ?We urge immediate action and for the owners of the agency to be barred from leaving the country.?
?The thing is we keep telling the public to deal only with licensed recruitment agencies. In this case, the drivers followed that advice. We believe that the POEA must cleanse its records of unscrupulous agencies like CYM,? Ople said.
She said one of the drivers, Claro Oliver of Rizal province, contacted her office over the weekend about their plight.
Citing her conversation with Oliver, Ople said the agency promised the Filipino drivers good-paying jobs with the Dubai government?s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).
Loan
The drivers said they paid as much as P150,000 to CYM in exchange for the jobs.
They said CYM asked each of the recruits to take out a P150,000 (11,418 dirhams) loan from a lending agency in Dubai (recommended by CYM) and made them sign undated checks worth P405,000 (about 40,000 dirhams) addressed to a bank and the lending agency, payable in 15 months.
However, some of the drivers?some of whom quit their local jobs despite years of service?have been waiting for the RTA jobs since January this year.
Citing media reports from the UAE, the center said the 137 stranded OFWs were forced to live in a camp near the Ajman city dump.
?Desperate for food and cash, the stranded drives have resorted to scavenging at a dumpsite for scrap food,? Ople said.
Eliseo Maximo, who has worked for 11 years as a bus driver in Manila, said: ?We?ve been collecting aluminum cans, selling them at 4 dirhams [1 dirham is about P10] per kilogram in Ajman, just to have something to eat.?
Relief convoy
The Filipino community there learned about the workers? plight from Filipino journalists working in Dubai and through word of mouth and e-mail.
The community leaders formed a relief convoy on Good Friday and Black Saturday and traveled to the OFWs? camp and brought donated canned goods, water, toiletries and other food items.
The drivers are sharing cramped quarters and their building gets only three to four hours of electricity from a generator, according to Ople.
A Philippine welfare officer, Elmer Joven, visited the stranded bus drivers.
Nearly half of the drivers hail from the province of Bulacan and have worked for years as professional drivers in reputable transport companies in the Philippines such as Baliuag Transit.
Passports
Aside from lack of food and shelter, the stranded Filipino drivers also complained that since their passports were being held by the Dubai counterpart of their agency, they could not apply for new jobs.
Ople asked the Philippine Consulate in Dubai to intervene and retrieve the passports of the stranded workers, as they still want to work in Dubai instead of being repatriated.
?Their biggest worry is on how they can repay the lending agency. If they come home, whatever they earn as bus drivers won?t be enough to pay off their loans and still sustain the needs of their families,? she explained.
She said that according to Claro, one company, the Emirates Catering Service, was willing to take some of the drivers in.
POEA investigation
Ople said she is awaiting documents from the bus drivers that would help speed up the POEA?s investigation into the alleged illegal recruitment practices of CYM International Services and its counterpart in Dubai.
She said the Filipino community lent the drivers a photocopy machine so they could consolidate and reproduce all the documents needed to bolster their case. One group of University of the Philippines alumni in Dubai even offered to help the workers put together their written complaints.
Ople said she would be bringing one of the wives of the bus driver to the POEA?s anti-illegal recruitment unit so she can recount what happened and ask advice on how the drivers can go about filing a formal complaint.
The former labor undersecretary said she also hoped the 137 drivers would be able to meet President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Vice President Noli De Castro, and other high-ranking officials who are now visiting Dubai.
De Castro, who was in Dubai over the weekend, met some of the OFWs. He said that as chair of the government?s inter-agency Anti-Illegal Recruitment Task Force he would ensure that ?legal actions would be taken against persons responsible.?
De Castro has assured immediate funding assistance for the 64 maltreated OFWs who are now housed at the Filipino Workers Resources Center in Dubai.
De Castro held a meeting with some 200 Filipino workers in the UAE over the weekend, before proceeding to Damascus, Syria where he was scheduled to inaugurate the new Philippine embassy building and hold bilateral meetings with Syrian officials. With reports from Jerome Aning and Cynthia D. Balana
