EDITORIAL - Stranded in Dubai

Frequent flyers to Dubai may be trumpeting rosy job prospects for Filipinos in the Middle East, but an ounce of caution could save prospective workers from a lot of grief.

Labor officials reported that 137 Filipinos are now stranded in Dubai after they paid P150,000 each for jobs that did not exist. Only 15 are set for repatriation; the rest must continue to endure living conditions in a shelter with poor water supply and electricity for only three or four hours a day. The shelter faces a dump where the workers have turned to scavenging for scrap metal that they can sell so they can have money for food.

The 137, mostly bus drivers, had read flyers distributed in several bus terminals in Central Luzon, announcing the availability of 4,000 jobs for bus drivers in Dubai. They applied with the recruiter, CYM International Services, for jobs with Dubai’s Road and Transport Authority. Though the P150,000 placement fee was steep, the drivers believed the promised salary would enable them to recoup the amount. The wives of several of the workers, who sued CYM International this week for illegal recruitment, said they had to borrow money to pay the recruitment and travel fees.

During President Arroyo’s latest trip to Dubai, Malacañang announced that over 220,000 jobs were available for Filipinos in the Middle East. At best, only a handful of those jobs would be in Dubai, whose real estate and construction boom ground to a halt amid the global financial crisis and the steep plunge in oil prices. Tourism, another revenue earner, has also suffered. The other major economic activity, financial services, won’t be needing 137 drivers any time soon. When the drivers arrived in Dubai, the Road and Transport Authority was unaware of the supposed job vacancies and said it was not hiring.

The government will have to intensify its crackdown on illegal recruiters amid the global downturn. There are also reports of Filipinos paying a fortune in placement fees for nursing jobs in the United States that turn out to be non-existent. Such stories are likely to increase as the international job market shrinks. The government should be ready to protect workers from predators.