PH to scale down deployment of OFWs to Saudi

MANILA, Philippines — Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III on Monday said they were set to scale down “starting next year” the deployment of new hires to Saudi Arabia due to the Gulf state’s continued failure to address the violations committed against Filipino migrant workers, who to date have claims amounting to at least P4.6 billion.

“The purpose of this scaling down is to call the attention of the Saudi government to what we consider as slow action to the plight of our workers … whose monetary claims have yet to be settled,” Bello told reporters.

This year alone, Bello said more than 300 overseas Filipino workers deployed in several construction and oil companies in Saudi Arabia have not received their salaries from their employers since April.

Over 200 of these workers are employed by one of the main contractors of state-owned Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer.

The affected workers are on top of the 13,000 OFWs who were repatriated by the Department of Labor and Employment in August 2016 after they weren’t given their due for up to two years.

Bello said that around 9,000 of these workers have yet to receive their claims.