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MANILA, Philippines – Thirty-one distressed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from Lebanon arrived in Manila through the assistance of the Philippine Embassy in Beirut, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said in a statement Friday.
The OFWs arrived on July 5 and were sent off at the Rafic Hariri International Airport by Ambassador Leah Basinang- Ruiz, Vice consul Rona Goce, head of the Embassy’s Assistance to Nationals (ATN) Section, and ATN Officer Edwin Juan Batallones.
Twenty-nine of the OFWs were wards at the Embassy’s Filipino Workers Resource Center (FWRC), while two others were from the Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center (CLMC).
“Majority of the repatriates were deployed to Lebanon in defiance of the deployment ban and subsequently left their respective employers due to complaints of maltreatment, unpaid salaries, being overworked, and forcible extension of employment contract,” the statement said.
The statement also noted Ruiz’s appeal for workers to observe the deployment ban and assist in the information campaign for Filipinos to avoid being victimized by illegal recruiters and abusive employers in Lebanon.
Ruiz also stressed that the deployment ban over Lebanon was still in place and that the Philippines and Lebanon were in the process of ratifying the Philippines-Lebanon Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Labor Cooperation and its accompanying Protocol on Household Service Workers, which was signed by both countries in Beirut last February 1.
Meanwhile, Raul Hernandez, DFA spokesman, in a separate press briefing, said that the embassy in Beirut had recommended that OFWs’ situations be looked at by the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking so that if they wished to file complaints and court action on recruitment agencies then they would be able to do so.