The Bureau of Immigration said it will not allow Kuwait-bound workers to leave after the government declared a ban on the deployment of newly-hired domestic workers in the Gulf state.
BI port operations division chief Grifton Medina said immigration officers in the different international ports have been instructed to strictly enforce the ban imposed by the Department of Labor and Employment.
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Medina said the ban applies to all newly-hired household service workers recruited for deployment to Kuwait.
He said that departing Kuwaiti-bound domestic workers whose overseas employment certificates were issued before the cut-off date of Jan. 3, 2020 as set by DOLE are still valid for deployment and thus will be allowed to leave.
The bureau carried out the ban after it received a copy of a Jan. 3 resolution from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration ordering a partial deployment ban.
In the resolution, the POEA also imposed a moratorium on the verification, accreditation, and processing of individual contracts and additional job orders for household workers.
Medina warned agencies against trying to circumvent the ban.
“Our system is integrated with POEA’s hence with a click of a finger, we would be able to verify an OFW’s records immediately,” he said.
Meanwhile, BI Commissioner Jaime Morente in a statement said that they are ready to implement any additional bans that might be imposed on deployments to Iraq, Iran, and Libya.
The statement comes amid growing tension between the United States and Iran after an American drone attack killed Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s elite Quds military force.
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