MANAMA – Filipinos are lucky to be working in “progressive and very open” Bahrain and it shows on the low number of incidents of Filipinos getting in trouble here.
Philippine Ambassador Alfonso Ver said on Wednesday that there was only one Filipino in death row here who was convicted for killing a Pakistani national last year and whose conviction the embassy was set to petition before the Court of Appeals in Bahrain next month.
And because there were still legal processes that the embassy could avail for the Filipino, whom Ver declined to identify, it would be premature to bring up his case for President Duterte to appeal for clemency to the King during his two-day state visit starting Thursday.
President Duterte is expected to arrive here at dawn of Thursday (Manila time), the second leg of his visit to three Gulf States this Holy Week. The President will be coming from his visit to Saudi Arabia and will end his Middle East tour with a visit in Qatar.
There are 60,000 Filipinos living and working in Bahrain, and they include professional, skilled and semi-skilled workers as well as household service workers. Many of them bring their families here.
Speaking to reporters, Ver said there were 38 Filipinos detained in Bahrain for various offenses, two of them drug-related offenses.
Sixteen of them are set to be deported but they are detained first before being released so they could clear their affairs like paying debts and accountabilities.
There are only three Filipino domestic helpers who are now in the embassy-run halfway center seeking refuge and Ver attributed the low number of incidents involving this type of workers to the “very strong Philippine labor office” which have been active in coordinating with recruitment agencies and employers here.
Ver said there were a “few hundreds” of undocumented Filipinos here and that because there is a national ID system in Bahrain, some of them just decide to go home because of limited chances of working here.
“Bahrain is one of the very progressive, very open [countries] and [known to] have pioneer policies. We are thankful for that,” Ver said in explaining the “low” number of cases and issues involving Filipinos here.