Remains of OFW killed in Kuwait arrive in PH

The body of slain OFW Jeanelyn Villavende at NAIA (Photo from the DFA Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs)

MANILA, Philippines — The remains of Filipino household service worker Jeanelyn Villavende, who was allegedly killed by her employer’s wife last month, arrived in Manila Wednesday afternoon.

Villavende’s remains arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and were received by her family.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III earlier said that Villavende’s remains would first be flown to General Santos City for re-autopsy and would then be taken to her hometown in Nurala, South Cotabato.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. met with the slain worker’s family hours before the arrival of her remains.

“She was just 5 months in their employ and her torture began relieved only by the few seconds she was given for phone calls to her family whose typhoon destroyed dwelling she wanted to rebuild. Then no more calls,” Locsin wrote on Twitter.

She was just 5 months in their employ and her torture began relieved only by the few seconds she was given for phone calls to her family whose typhoon destroyed dwelling she wanted to rebuild. Then no more calls. Gave family P100,000. That’s P20,000 for every month of her agony. https://t.co/guX8fWLzaX

— Teddy Locsin Jr. (@teddyboylocsin) January 8, 2020

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Villavende’s family was given financial assistance of P100,000 “to help defray the costs of the funeral expenses.”

The DFA said it had also commissioned a “top-notch” criminal lawyer in Kuwait to pursue the case against Villavende’s killers and ensure that justice would be served.

The employer and his wife, the alleged perpetrators behind the worker’s death, remain in jail in Kuwait, the DFA noted.

“For what they did to her the death penalty is a mercy,” Locsin said in a separate tweet.

He also vowed to go after Villavende’s local recruitment agency.

“I’m gonna get that native recruiter who sent her to her torment,” he said.

The embalmment certificate of Villavende’s body showed that she died on Dec. 28, 2019 due to “acute failure of heart and respiration as result by shock and multiple injuries in the vascular nervous system.”

Her death triggered the imposition of partial ban on the deployment of household service workers to Kuwait following the Philippine government’s outrage over the incident, which was deemed a violation of the labor agreement between the two nations on the protection of overseas Filipino workers.

In February 2018, the Philippines imposed a total deployment ban on Kuwait after authorities found inside a freezer the body of domestic help Joanna Demafelis, who was killed by her employers.

The ban was lifted three months later after Manila and Kuwait signed the said agreement.

/atm