United Arab Emirates concern for OFWs

Speaking at the Abu Dhabi Dialogue held in Pasay City last week, President Aquino mentioned ten million Filipinos living and working outside the Philippines, 60 percent of them working in countries of destination represented in the dialogue. The OFWs have given currency to the phenomenon called “diaspora,” he said. He added that wherever Filipinos have worked, “they have been a force for good. They have had a positive effect on their host countries, contributing their caring and nurturing characteristics to their new environments.” He thus challenged the dialogue participants representing 11 countries to work on policies of recruitment that are fair and efficient, treat workers with dignity, and for their reintegration in their societies.

The President expressed admiration for the Abu Dhabi Dialogue as “an excellent opportunity” for migrant worker-sending and receiving countries “not just to share our visions or our ideas but also to listen to what our counterparts have to say. After all, none of our economies grow in a vacuum; and thus progress comes not from focusing only on our own people or only on our own growth; it comes from strengthening partnerships, focusing on each other’s growth.”

Last week’s dialogue was the second of senior officials’ meetings and ministerial consultations discussing regional contractual labor collaboration among labor origin countries as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam, and destination countries as Bahrain, Kuwait, Malaysia, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. This second time, the theme was “Sustaining Regional Cooperation towards Enhanced Management of Temporary Contract Employment Cycle in Asia.”

The first ADD meeting was organized by the United Arab Emirates in 2008. It was expected that last week’s meeting would endorse a set of guidelines for voluntary bilateral and multilateral initiatives called “Framework of regional Collaboration Between Labor Sending and Receiving Asian countries on the administration of the Contractual work Cycle.”

Last week’s meeting followed through the adoption of the Abu Dhabi Declaration that sought protection for contract workers along four major areas: knowledge-sharing on market trends, skills profiles, workers and remittances policies and flows, and their relationship to development; building capacity for effective matching of labor supply and demand; preventing illegal recruitment and promoting welfare and protection measures, and developing a framework for managing the entire cycle of temporary contractual work that foster the mutual interest of countries of origin and destination.

Speakers during the three-day meeting included Philippine Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz; UAE Labor Undersecretary Mubarak Al Dhaheri; Bangladesh Secretary of the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Employment Zafar Ahmed Khan, and UAE Labor Minister Saqr Ghobash Saeed Ghobash.

That such a dialogue among top-level labor heads is taking place is a step towards cleansing the often heartbreaking conflict and abusive relationship between hiring entities and hired workers. This columnist can only speak of the agony of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) whose calvary begins right at home, from their being poor, unemployed or underemployed, who are buried in debt for recruitment and placement and travel fees, then to their arrival at their promised employment destination where they find out their salaries are below the agreed rate, or are placed as domestic helpers with abusive employers, to their return home either as deportees without working visas.

It’s noteworthy that the United Arab Emirates is way ahead of other Mideast countries in protecting the rights and welfare of migrant workers. Proof of this commitment to uphold migrant workers’ rights is their sponsorship of the Second Abu Dhabi Dialogue.

The UAE is a federation of seven emirates (equivalent to principalities), each governed by a hereditary emir, with a national president. The constituent emirates are Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fuairach, Ras al-Kajaj, Sarjeh and Umn al-Quwain. The capital is Abu Dhabi, which is also the state’s center of political, industrial and cultural activities. UAE has oil reserves ranked as the world’s sixth largest, and is one of the world’s most developed countries in West Asia. It ranks among the world’s largest nations, with a per capita GDP (PPP) of $448,597.

Filipinos in the UAE are primarily migrant OFWs. Wikepedia lists the Filipino population in the emirates as between 280,000 and 500,000, or 4.3 percent of the overall population there. Dubai is home to the largest population of Filipinos, followed by Abu Dhabi. OFWs there are employed in the architecture, construction, cargo shipping, design engineering, energy, information technology, marketing, medical, and real estate, retail, telecommunications and tourism sectors or as domestic helpers.

The Philippines, through DOLE, played host to this year’s dialogue, but it was the UAE that did the organizational spadework and more important, fully funded the forum (including the travel and accommodation expenses of 1,800 participants) to resolve problems related to labor contracting.

The Philippines has been tapped to continue hosting the ADD next year. At the same time, UAE expressed willingness to host the forum in Abu Dhabi, where the ADD was first launched in 2008 — all expenses paid.

Observers told me it looked like the Philippine government seemed to have kept a low profile during the event due to the failure of its key agencies to address the many concerns of OFWs. These offices are DOLE itself, the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA).

In fact, these observers asked why there was little information on the ADD in the media, considering that this would directly affect some 9 to 10 million OFWs. In this paper, alone, no mention was made of the event, whose resolutions would affect millions of OFW families. Furthermore, migrant groups and NGOs were not invited to the dialogue.

A private group leader told me, “The Philippine government should now take firm steps to set its own house in order.” A problem area that the agencies should look into is the pre-departure orientation seminar (PDOS) being given to OFWs. The current PDOS, he said,“ ”is deeply flawed and is not responsive to the broad range of OFW concerns. These concerns include coping with a foreign culture and working environment, dealing with employers and co-workers, and steps to be taken when they run into trouble with authorities or face stressful situations abroad.”

“Clearly, there is a conflict of interest situation when POEA-licensed recruitment and placement agencies or their affiliates provide the PDOS to OFWS. Recruiters turn the PDOS into a milking cow, with some either haphazardly holding the seminars or just giving PDOS certificates even to non-attendees in exchange for extra fees.”

Nor do placement agencies arm OFWs with the knowledge about legal avenues for redress of grievances, including their right to file complaints against the recruiters before the POEA or the National Labor Relations Commission for abuses committed by employers.”

“It’s unfortunate,” said this observer,” that while destination countries such as UAE want to protect the right of migrant workers, the Philippine government leaves much to be desired in assisting OFWs when they become victims of abuse, maltreatment and labor malpractices.”

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