Despite the fresh fancy of a loquacious pen-pushing dodo who took exception to the long-minted reference of “Filipina” as a domestic servant, such ugly appellation is a universal consensus.
Italians, for instance, define “Filippina” (sic) as “cleaning woman” who, aside from literally maintaining household cleanliness and proper order, also includes cooking, laundry chores, baby-sitting, care-giving, gardening, and other domestic housekeeping.
The 80 thousand migrants in Italy, generically dubbed as OFWs, are employed as domestic helpers (DH), per stats of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration. And among Filipino OFWs worldwide, especially in mid-East oil nouveau riche countries, the Filipina DHs constitute the majority.
It’s certain that none of the “cleaning woman” category is illiterate. Most of them are college graduates, or educated beyond high school. They are forced by poverty and the dearth of job opportunities fit to their EQ in their native land. Rather than stay idle, they try their hard luck abroad “for the fund of it”, no matter what or how, and at what risk.
The government is fortunate that the yearly OFWs dollar remittance ranges from $12 billion to over $15 billion. This has boosted the government’s dollar reserves beyond bottom penury, especially that the government is on financial anomaly of deficit-spending and, existing precariously on foreign and domestic borrowings.
No wonder that the national leaders/politicians love to flatter the OFWs as “silent heroes” for their role as dollar earners. In reality, they ought to bury their heads in shame for the state of life locally because of corruption in milking the public coffers like leeches, insisting on their pork barrel wastage, over-abusing the so-called “intelligence” and “discretionary” funds, the SOP “add-ons” for whatever projects, and a host of other shenanigans. Aside from being in financial tatters, the government cannot provide employment. Forcibly, the thousands of the jobless part with their small assets, and others borrow from loan sharks, to essay their fate for the unknown and uncertain ventures abroad.
A great many are employed as domestic servants by private or family employers. They are the ones liable to be abused, and over-abused like chattels, and many are raped, physically maltreated, under-fed, over-worked, and under-slept. These are common tales of woes especially from Mid-East private masters, deprived of their rights as individuals, and denied of their dignity as human beings.
It is thus exhilarating that Filipinas in Switzerland have taken interest in raising the status and pride of Pinays there by forming a core group of mostly Pinay pros for leadership training. Short of being radicals or leftists, they aim to involve actively to be noticed and not just being quiet and submissive, but to be “noisy” in community affairs.
Much better still, not just in Switzerland, but worldwide where there are Filipino migrants or OFWs, the domestic helpers have to organize themselves for their self-protection and preservation of their dignity. Hence, the POEA and the Philippine embassies in various countries, as well as the labor attaches have to lead in organizing and overseeing the DH groups.
Meantime, unless the government provides ample job opportunities at home, many household maid OFWs are bound to continue risking their honor, nay, their lives and those of their loved ones in broken homes, “for the fund of it” abroad. Thus, the non-complimentary tag that the Philippines is a country of servants stays and festers.
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Email: lparadiangjr@yahoo.com