MALACAÑANG has sent a delegation of Filipino Muslims to help resolve the country’s diplomatic row with Kuwait, an official from the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos said Sunday.
Dimapuno Alonto Datu Ramos Jr., director of the NCMF’s Bureau of External Affairs, told the Manila Standard that President Rodrigo Duterte sent his law school classmate Abdullah Mama-o to help initiate dialogue with Kuwaiti foreign and labor officials.
Sources from among Filipino Muslim workers in Kuwait said lawyer Mama’o, the presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers, made possible a meeting with Kuwaiti diplomats on May 2 by exploring the “alternative avenue of cultural ties.”
Accompanied by Consul-General Norodin Lomondot, Mama-o initially met Kuwaiti Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled Al-Jarallah in a bid to restore relations strained by the death of a Filipino domestic who was found inside a freezer earlier this year, then by Kuwaiti anger at operations run by Philippine embassy personnel and diplomats to rescue distressed Filipino workers in Kuwait, videos of which spread through the internet.
A similar delegation of Muslim Filipinos was sent to the Middle East in 1974 when most Arab countries and Iran imposed an oil embargo on the Philippines at the height of the Mindanao conflict.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Alan Peter Cayetano said late Saturday that ties between the two countries were headed in “a positive direction,” after Kuwait allowed an initial batch of 61 Filipino workers there to return home, even after the amnesty period ended on April 22.
Cayetano, who welcomed the returning workers, said about 700 more were waiting to be sent home in the coming weeks from the embassy’s shelter in Kuwait.
He added that he has instructed the embassy to give priority to the welfare of Filipinos because ties with other countries can always be repaired, unlike workers who are killed, raped or beaten up.
Cayetano said the two countries are “moving forward” on an agreement to protect Filipino workers in Kuwait that was being negotiated before a crisis developed over the Philippine embassy’s well publicized rescue missions, which led the Gulf state to expel Ambassador Renato Villa.
Earlier, the discovery of the body of Joanna Demafelis in a freezer in Kuwait in February prompted the Philippines to ban the deployment of Filipino workers to the Gulf state unless there is an agreement to give them better protection.
But Party-list Rep. Aniceto Bertiz III of the ACTS-OFW rejected a draft of the agreement between the Philippines and Kuwait as “a toothless deal.”
“It is basically a vague promise,” Bertiz said, adding that it does not spell out enforcement mechanisms such as labor inspections or penalties for Kuwaiti employers who deprive Filipino domestics of their rights.
“Without the means of enforcement or coercion, we cannot expect reasonable compliance by Kuwaiti employers,” Bertiz said.
Bertiz warned that Filipino domestic workers in Kuwait would remain at high risk of getting mistreated and exploited, even if the agreement is signed.