Senate seeks total deployment ban to countries abusing OFWs

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The Senate has adopted a resolution pushing for a total deployment ban to countries not granting Filipino household service workers rights and work conditions similar to their nationals.

Adopted last Wednesday night was Senate resolution No. 676 “expressing the sense of the Senate that the deployment of overseas Filipino household service workers to countries that do not afford migrants the same rights and work conditions as their nationals and allow the withholding of Philippine passports be totally banned.”

On the last session day last Wednesday, Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III sponsored the resolution on the floor where he sought an end to the bad experiences of many Filipino household service works in the hands of their foreign employers after he cited some of their cases.

“In these place it is often the practice that employers are permitted to withhold the passports of their foreign staff because foreign staff need to be sponsored by an employer to work in their country, these employers see their foreign staff as acquisitions, as property, functionally as slaves,” Pimentel said. “This must end.”

He said the government could not stop Filipinos from going abroad to seek better jobs until it could provide them better lives at home.

“However, we can — and we should — limit the places where they seek employment in only countries that provide Filipino workers the same rights and protections given to nationals of that country,” Pimentel said.

He said he was co-sponsoring the resolution with Senators Emmanuel Pacquiao and Antonio Trillanes IV.

Pimentel expressed hope that the executive branch heed their call for a total deployment ban for Filipino household service workers in countries not according them the same rights and work conditions as their nationals.