Malaysian, wife blacklisted by BI

The Bureau of Immigration backlisted yesterday a rich Malaysian businessman and his wife who were accused of maltreating and abusing three Filipino women who were employed to work as office workers by his company in South Africa but ended up working as maids for their household.

Immigration Commissioner Rufus Rodriguez said Dato Abu Hassan Samsudin and his South African wife, Melleney Miller, were banned from entering the country on the request of the Department of Foreign Affairs which received a report on the alleged abuses committed by the couple against their Filipino maids.

Rodriguez said three Filipino women have filed a complaint against the Malaysian couple before the Philippine Embassy in Pretoria accusing their employer of violating their work contracts and subjecting them to unfair labor practices.

The workers, Elizabeth Genizera, Teresa Unabia and Amelita Larona, told the embassy that they were recruited by a company owned by Samsudin to work as office workers but they ended up as domestic helpers.

Samsudin, according to the embassy, was once considered as the biggest individual investor in South Africa and owns the Kyalami and Mitrajaya Civil Engineering (Pty) Ltd. which hired the three Filipino women.

The women said they were recruited last year to work as office manager and contract administrators for Samsudin's company based at Samrand Industrial and Commercial Park in Centurion, South Africa and promised a monthly salary of $1,666 each.

Upon arriving South Africa, however, the three were instead made to work as maids at the Johannesburg mansion of Samsudin with a monthly pay of $200 each. They were also made to work for more than eight hours a day, including Sundays, the complainants said.

The women also complained that Samsudin's wife often maltreated and verbally abused them. The couple, they added, confiscated their passports and prevented them from leaving their workplace without escorts.

Aladin Villacorta, Philippine Ambassador to Pretoria, said his men fetched the three women from their workplace last Nov. 26 after the Samsudin couple threatened to transfer them to some other place where they cannot be located by the embassy.

Villacorta recounted that it took his men four hours to negotiate the return of the passports of the three women and before they were allowed to leave the heavily-guarded and locked premises. Their lady employer allegedly even tried to hurt the three maids as they were leaving the mansion.

The three women were eventually repatriated to Manila after their employers agreed to buy their plane tickets and paid them $2,412 each. The DFA has also asked the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration to blacklist Samsudin's company for duping the three maids into believing that they were to be hired as office workers.