Strengthening our overseas labor office

KUWAIT — In Kuwait today, we have 140,000 OFWs and only ten staff in the Labor Office, or a ratio of one staff for every 14,000. One has just left us while her replacement is not yet been accredited. The Labor Attaché is virtually alone fighting windmills.

He does not even have a serviceable vehicle. How can he visit the hundreds of OFWs in hospitals and clinics? How can he visit the thousand of OFWs who are in jails and detention centers for violations of immigrations and other laws?

Our Labor Attaché is taking a taxi to fight the scourge of injustice everyday, scores of OFWs come to the Labor Attaché to complain of illegal dismissals, non-payment of salaries, sexual harassments and others forms of contract violations, verbal and physical abuses, maltreatment, excessive working hours and insufficient foods and rest periods.

He has to attend to their problems and conduct conciliation and mediation procedures. He has inadequate resources and insufficient manpower support.

There are 180 runaway DHs in our center. We have sick, pregnant, old, and injured OFWs. There are 11 children, ranging in age from five months to four years. Their mothers are OFWs who were impregnated by other foreign workers or their employers.

We don’t have enough resources to care for them. We don’t have a doctor to attend to their illness, no social worker to process their psychological needs, no counseling expert to heal their emotional wounds.

I have trained voluntary counselors from many good-hearted Filipino community leaders. But these are unpaid voluntary works who have no obligations to continue serving. After a year of volunteer work, only my wife and a few religious leaders have remained. In other words, we need help so that we can serve our OFWs well.

Great harvest, few hands

The harvest of opportunities for services is indeed great, but the hands are too few. There are so many cases and there are not enough people to handle them.

In our center, there are many sick OFWs who need medicine. There are children who have been abandoned by their alien fathers. We need the international lawyers to protect the rights of distressed OFWs but we don’t have the budget to pay for their services.

We are asked to make sure that the rights of 140,000 OFWs are protected but there are only ten of us. Soon, we shall only be nine, then eight. And the numbers of those who need help keep on increasing.

This is not the time for finger-pointing, not the time for fault-finding. This is not the time to blame government alone nor to put the guilt only in the hands of DOLE, nor POEA, nor OWWA.

This is the time for deep reflection and for finding solutions and for stopping the escalation of the problem. This is the time for government, for people and for NGOs and GOs to come together and solve these problems together. This is the time for politicians to stop riding on issues and get pogi points at the expense of those who are trying to help. These are times for holding hands and not for pointing fingers. Please help. Don’t just make noise.

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