Senate Majority Leader Joel Villanueva has urged the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to ensure that the displaced overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in New Zealand will get their back pay and other benefits on time.
“Having no job in a foreign country is a nightmare for our kababayan OFWs. For them, it’s no work, no pay. And without pay, how will they survive?” Villanueva, author of the DMW Act, said.
He called the attention of the DMW and the DFA to act with dispatch on the plight of the OFWs in NZ to avoid a repeat of the experience of over 10,000 OFWs in Saudi Arabia who lost their jobs in 2015 and have yet to receive their back wages and other benefits to this day.
“We don’t want a repeat of what happened to our kababayans who were laid off in Saudi Arabia and remained waiting to get their pay and other receivables. Let’s act now,” Villanueva stressed.
Some 700 workers were affected by the latest mass layoff in NZ, who found themselves suddenly jobless when ELE, a skilled labor agency in the construction and manufacturing sector, shut down unannounced four days before Christmas.
While the firm promised to pay the OFWs, it did not give a definite date when it would do so.