Migrante says former Philippine envoy should answer for plight of OFWs in Syria
MANILA, Philippines—Former Philippine Ambassador to Syria Wilfredo Cuyugan should be made to answer for why 90 percent of the 17,000 Filipino workers in that Middle East country are undocumented, a migrants rights group said Saturday.
Migrante International said Cuyugan and other Filipino officials in Damascus should be investigated for failing to work for the Filipinos’ legalization and to quickly repatriate OFWs that were in distress.
“The Philippine embassy in Syria, the (Department of Foreign Affairs) and the (Department of Labor and Employment) are saying that 90 percent of the OFWs in Syria are undocumented. So what have they done to assist the undocumented to be documented and eventually be legalized?” said Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona.
He said Migrante had estimated there were up to 40,000 undocumented OFWs across the Middle East.
Monterona said that under the amended Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act, Philippine diplomatic posts are mandated to institute a registration scheme of undocumented OFWs.
He said that if not for the upheaval in Syria, the “deplorable plight of the undocumented OFWs” would not have been known.
“In fact, the government seems to blame the undocumented, who were mostly forced to run away from their employers for reasons of abuse, maltreatment and labor malpractice,” he said.
Monterona also noted that only 17 distressed OFWs had been repatriated from Syria as of Aug. 31.
“They were among the 60 OFWs in distress who had been staying at the embassy’s Filipino Workers Resource Centers since June,” he said.
Monterona said the “wait and see” attitude of the government was endangering the lives of OFWs in strife-torn countries.
“If at the onset of the Syrian upheaval, the diplomatic post and the DFA had initiated the mapping of OFWs in Syria by identifying their location and getting connected with the them, then it could have avoided the difficulties of evacuating them to a safer place like the embassy in Damascus,” Monterona said.
“While identifying the locations of OFWs, simultaneously it should have arranged an interface with the 800 documented OFWs’ respective employers and agencies,” he added.
As for the undocumented OFWs, Monterona said Migrante had been urging the Philippine government even before the upheaval to work for their legalization, if not repatriation, by negotiating with their host governments.
“But the Philippine government for a long time just disregarded the thousands of undocumented OFWs here in the Middle East,” Monterona said.
