Tragedies involving maids

KUWAIT – The maids are the most vulnerable among our OFWs. There is no safety nets that can assure workers’ protection against rapes by male employers, against physical and verbal abuses by female employers, against all forms of cruelty and disrespect to human dignity. The Embassy and the Labor Attach? have no power to enter into the private homes and domain of foreign employers. We have no authority to see for ourselves if it is true that maids work for 16 to 18 hours a day, that they are not given adequate food, much less medicine when they are sick.

We have documents however indubitably showing many incidents of acts of lasciviousness committed by male employers and their young sons. We have evidence indicating that many employers don’t pay salaries to their maids. We have photos showing hematoma, contusions, abrasions, open wounds, burns, sprains and broken bones. We have actual cases of pregnancy and children of maids who are being abandoned by their alien fathers. I should know whereof I speak and whereof I write about because I have custody of almost 200 victims of man’s inhumanities to these poor and hopeless maids. Here Kuwait, I am deeply immersed in painful realities. Unlike some ivory tower writers who indulge in fiction and spins, I am right here where the rubber hits the road.

Too much profiteering out of maids

For every maid that a Philippine recruitment agency deploys to the Middle East, the agency is paid more or less US $1,500 (P72,000). That means if an agency can deploy 100 maids a month, they earn a whopping $150,000 or P7.2 million. Too much money earned out of the tears and sweat of Filipino women. Even if they send P2.2 million in overhead cost, they still have a net of P5 million a month or P60 million a year. Is there any other business more lucrative than that? Do we wonder why it is hard to put a stop to this business?

That earning does not include their other sources of revenues, from photographs, photocopying machines, medical examination fees (clinics charge P5,000 and remit P3,000 to the agency, or the agency owns the clinics too). They also operate lending companies where job applicants borrow money at outrageous interest rates. 

It is not true that applicants don’t pay placement fees (that’s the law). There is another way to circumvent the law. They manage to do this by salary deductions. That’s why maids often work without salary for three to four months. 

This business makes the recruiter filthy rich while it impoverish, break the family of, and destroy the dignity of maids. This should be stopped. To us, this is both urgent and imperative. May we thus call the attention of those who make laws and formulate policies.

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