Almost 200K OFWs in Saudi fix work status

MANILA, Philippines - At least 196,633 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Saudi Arabia were able to fix their work status after the kingdom set a period of time to comply with its Saudization policy.

“It looked like a difficult task at first, but we were able to accomplish the feat. In the end, the correction of stay will be very beneficial for them,” Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said, referring to the Philippine government's campaign to convince migrant Filipino workers to correct their work status.

The crackdown against illegal workers started on March 28 as part of the Saudization policy which encourage employment of Saudi nationals in private companies.

During the seven-month period of implementation of the 2013 Saudi Amnesty Program from April 6 to Nov. 3 last year, Baldoz said 104,364 OFWs in Saudi Arabia weew able to successfully correct their work categories in their work permits. A DOLE report said another 53,330 OFWs were able to transfer to new employers while 38,939 voluntarily went home.

Baldoz said during the implementation of the policy on foreign workers from Nov. 4 to Dec. 31, 2013, 5,094 OFWs were repatriated to the Philippines.

The Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Riyadh, however, reported that there is still an estimated 450 to 500 OFWs in the Central Region Area seeking repatriation.

"These OFWs are those who were not able to complete the correction process and are living out of the POLO or Embassy premises and are listed on-call as to when their cases are due for processing at the Jawazat,” the report said.

“We are off to a renewed bid in terms of legal and proper OFW deployment to Saudi Arabia and we are hoping that we could do the same with the other OFW-destination countries. It is our objective to be able to afford stronger and better protection for the OFWs wherever they are and we can only do that if we know where they are, what they are doing, and they were able to pass the legal deployment process,” Baldoz said.