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MANILA, Philippines -- The Department of Foreign Affairs has advised Filipino workers who were repatriated from Lebanon to file cases against their recruiters for sending them to Lebanon in violation of a government ban on deployment there.
Philippine Ambassador to Lebanon Gilberto G.B. Asuque, who welcomed the second batch of 104 repatriates from Lebanon at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Tuesday, advised the workers to press charges.
The ambassador also said that DFA and the Department of Labor and Employment-Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (DOLE-POEA) would provide assistance and support to the repatriates should they decide to pursue their cases in court.
Before they left Lebanon, the repatriates drew up and signed affidavits implicating their respective recruiters. These affidavits would be used in their cases before the DOLE-POEA, Asuque said.
The repatriation costs of the 104 were taken from the DFA?s Assistance to Nationals Fund (ATN). An earlier batch of 45 adults and three infants arrived here Monday.
The repatriates were welcomed in the airport by Asuque, officials of the DFA Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (DFA-OUMWA) Executive Director Enrico Fos and DFA-OUMWA Principal Assistant Maurice Tiempo.
Before their repatriation, the workers stayed at the Filipino Workers Resource Center, which is run by the Philippine Embassy in Lebanon, while the embassy and the Philippine Overseas Labor Office-Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (POLO-OWWA) negotiated with the employers and immigration authorities for exit clearances of these Filipinos.
Some of them initially faced contract violation complaints, but because of representations made by the embassy and the POLO-OWWA, their employers desisted from filing cases against them and also waived their deployment cost.
