Whose side are POEA conciliators on?
Vifellia Alarcon of Iloilo applied for a job in Hong Kong with the AIMS Agency and paid P85,000 as placement fee.
In Hong Kong, she was made to work not only for her employer but also for her employer’s parents. One time she was scolded because her employer was not satisfied with the way she had cleaned the grandparents’ house. She answered her employer, pointing out that cleaning another family’s house was prohibited in the contract she signed.
Her employer was angered by her response and complained to the CT agency, AIMS’ counterpart in HK. She said Vifellia did not know how to prepare food for the children, always disobeyed her instructions and had too many complaints.
Vifellia countered that her workload was too heavy. She said she usually started work at 6 a.m. and slept at midnight.
At any rate, after working for two months and 13 days, Vifellia was brought back to the agency. Her employer told the agency that it was Vifellia who wanted to end her contract and return to the Philippines—a charge she denied.
In Hong Kong, an employer can terminate an employee by paying a one month salary advance. The law gives a domestic worker in such a situation 14 days to stay, unless she finds a new employer.
Luckily, Vifellia found one. She signed a contract with another agency, the Sunlight Agency in HK and paid a HK$750 processing fee.
Because it was the last day allowed on her visa, she flew back to the Philippines. She had instructions to go to the Ascend Agency in Manila, the counterpart of her new agency in HK, to complete the processing of her documents. The new agency asked her for US$300 and P15,000 more to cover medical and dental examinations.
Vifellia was buried in debts. She waited more than two months before she was sent back to HK. She waited nine days at the agency office, only to be told that her employer was no longer interested in hiring a domestic helper because she had decided to relocate to
China.
Vifellia again returned to the Philippines with much grief and tears. To try to get her money back for the two failed contracts, she filed complaints against both AIMS and ASCEND agencies with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA). During their conciliation hearing, Vifellia said she was dismayed to hear the POEA conciliator say in front of agency representatives: “kung titingnan, panalo ka, pero kung ako ang agency, hindi ako magbabayad ng halagang kinuwenta mo ayon sa hindi nasunod na kontrata (It seems you have won but if I were the agency, I would not pay the amounts you listed for the failed contracts).” The next hearing, no one from the agency attended.
Vifellia came to the Bantay OCW office to share her painful experiences and ask: Is POEA on the side of the agencies?
Vifellia eventually settled for a small amount of money. Our kababayan is now working in Qatar. We’ll find out about the next chapter of her life as an overseas Filipino worker in the Middle East.
