DMW: 1,100 displaced OFWs get indemnity from Saudi Arabia

More overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who lost their jobs due to the closure of construction firms in Saudi Arabia have processed and received their labor claims, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) says on Monday, February 19, 2024. (INQUIRER.NET FILES)

MANILA, Philippines — More overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who lost their jobs due to the closure of construction firms in Saudi Arabia have processed and received their labor claims, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) said Monday.

According to the DMW office-in-charge, Undersecretary Hans Cacdac, the Overseas Filipino Bank (OFBank), and the Land Bank of the Philippines with Saudi’s Alinma Bank have processed 1,204 indemnity checks as of February 19.

It also said that of the total, 1,100 checks have already been cashed out.

“We should expect more checks to cover the Saudi claimants. As of today, 1,204 checks have been processed and 1,100 have been credited. It was 843 when [President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.] first announced this about a week ago,” Cacdac said in a media briefing.

READ: 1,500 of over 10,000 displaced Saudi OFWs to get compensation by March

“That covers around 57,760,992 Saudi Riyals or 15,238,959 US dollars. And as mentioned, we expect many more checks to come, payments to come,” he added.

On February 6, Marocs said in a post on Facebook that the first batch of claimants had received their labor compensations as part of the promise of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud that insurance claims will be settled.

Cacdac first announced that more OFWs will receive payouts for their unpaid wages from Saudi construction companies on February 10, saying that the DMW is eyeing to distribute 400 more checks within March of this year, totaling to about 1,500.

It should be noted, however, that it has been almost a decade since the OFWs’ construction firms declared bankruptcy as it shut down in 2015 and 2016.

Addressing discrepancies

The DMW further said it is working to address challenges in accommodating the indemnity claims for the heirs of displaced workers who have already passed away.

“In reply to this challenge, we were able to forge a memorandum of understanding or agreement which is due for signing with Land Bank and OFBank. The idea there is to come up with a special banking process in order to fast track and streamline the usual judicial process of depositing and encashing a check when the payee has already died,” DMW Undersecretary Bernard Olalia said during Monday’s media briefing.

Another challenge, Olalia noted, was that some checks bear misspelled claimants’ names.

READ: DMW: Unpaid wages of displaced Saudi OFWs ‘forthcoming’

To address this, he said that DMW has agreed with Land Bank to allow such checks to be deposited – but the identities of OFWs must be validated by the DMW and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).

“So the Land Bank will allow the deposit of checks bearing the names of workers whose names are misspelled or have a slight discrepancy in their name by the proper DMW or OWWA office to guarantee that the payee is the one and the same person who deposited the check with the Land Bank,” Olalia said, partly in Filipino.

The DMW previously said that some 10,554 OFWs have been awaiting their compensation from construction companies in Saudi Arabia.