Job seekers urged to heed deployment ban to Lebanon

Lebanese Red Cross members, carry a dead body after they remove it from beneath rubble of a collapsed building in Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday. Lebanese security officials say the death toll from the collapse of a five-story residential building in Beirut has risen to 18, most of them foreigners. AP

MANILA, Philippines – Philippine officials in Beirut urged job seekers to heed the ban on the deployment of workers to Lebanon.

Philippine Ambassador in Beirut Lea Basinang-Ruiz made the appeal following the repatriation of 31 Filipino workers in distress last Thursday.

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, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The 29 repatriates were wards at the Embassy’s Filipino Workers Resource Center (FWRC), while two others were from the Caritas Lebanon Migrant Center (CLMC).

Ruiz urged workers to assist in the information campaign so that Filipinos in their own communities will become aware of it and not allow themselves to be victimized by illegal recruiters and abusive employers in Lebanon.

She stressed that the deployment ban to Lebanon is still in place.

“In the meantime, both countries are 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,” Ruiz said in a statement.