Many Filipino caregivers in Canada were reportedly being exploited by employers, Santiago said. "Reports have reached my office that many of our compatriots who are working overseas as caregivers are allegedly underpaid yet overworked."
Many of them also reportedly do work that is not stipulated in their contracts, among other complaints.
Santiago, who chairs the Senate committee on foreign relations, has filed a resolution asking the Senate labor committee to look into the reports.
She also wants to know if Philippine embassy officials are doing their jobs in protecting the workers’ rights.
"The remittances from our overseas Filipino workers are the only things that are keeping our economy afloat. If our government is aggressively deploying Filipinos to work abroad then it must just as aggressively work towards protecting their rights and ensuring that they are not treated as modern-day slaves and that they are given commensurate compensation for their labor," Santiago said.
These problems must be resolved while it’s still early to avoid more problems in the future, she added.
The demand for caregivers and nurses in the United States, Canada and other Western countries has caused a boom in schools offering nursing and caregiver courses in the Philippines.
Around eight million Filipinos work in dozens of countries and aboard most ships across the globe because of lack of jobs back home.
Lured by bigger salaries, about 2,000 Filipinos leave for jobs abroad each month. Although low by foreign standards, salaries abroad are still high compared to wages in the Philippines.
Filipino teachers abroad get starting salaries ranging from $500 to $1,000 a month (P55,000), excluding benefits, according to the Commission on Filipinos Overseas.
A public school teacher in the Philippines, on the other hand, gets a starting salary of P10,000.
Migrant Filipino workers send up to $8 billion in remittances to families back home, which is critical to the Philippines’ fragile economy.