Bahrain prefers Filipino workers, seeks faster deployment by PH

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III answers a reporter’s question on deployment of Filipino workers to Bahrain in a news conference of Cabinet workers who accompanied President Rodrigo Duterte to the kingdom on Good Friday, April 14, 2017. (Photo from a video by the President Communications Operations Office)

MANAMA, Bahrain — Bahrain wants more Filipino migrants to work here but finds the Philippine government’s process of deploying its workers too slow.

This was the complaint of Bahrain’s assistant labor secretary to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello during a “long” meeting the had last Thursday.

He noted that the Bahrain labor official, whose name he did not mention, complained that it would take the Philippines six weeks to process the deployment of Filipinos to Bahrain.

“While they prefer Filipino migrant workers over nationalities like Indonesians and Indians, the processing of our government was quite slow,” the labor secretary told reporters at a news conference on Friday by Cabinet secretaries who joined President Rodrigo Duterte in his state visit here.

That why Bello said he told the Bahrain labor official that the Philippine government would make sure this process would be reduced from six weeks to one week.

And to make this big change, he said the Department of Labor and Employment would cut more red tape in processing.

Bello said the Bahrain labor official would visit Manila on May 8 as they had agreed to sign an agreement reducing from six weeks to one week the deployment processing.

“So its clear Filipinos are preferred – not only here in Barhrain but anywhere in the world,” Bello told reporters.

He added Filipinos are wanted abroad for work due to their “competence, patience and trustworthiness.”

There are 60,000 Filipinos now living and working in Bahrain.

Duterte is in Bahrain for a state visit but is due to leave for Doha, Qatar at 8 p.m. of Friday (or 1 a.m.PHT).

Qatar is the last stop of Duterte’s visits to three Gulf States this Holy Week and that began in Saudi Arabia. /atm