Disturbing events happened in the last week of January. Two Filipinas, both household service workers in Kuwait, suffered tragic deaths. One of them, Jakatia Pawa, a 32-year-old mother of two, was hanged on Jan. 25 for allegedly killing her employer’s 22-year-old daughter in May 2007. She was convicted to death by hanging in 2010. The other one—Amy Capulong Santiago—was reported to have been beaten to death by her Kuwaiti employer. Records of the Police Directorate General of Criminal Evidence in Kuwait showed that Santiago’s body bore old and fresh bruises. Contusions on various parts of her body showed that the beatings went on for a certain period of time.
The fates suffered by these two Filipino household workers in Kuwait represent only the tip of the mountain of agonies and oppression that Filipino household service workers suffer in the Middle East, especially Kuwait. According to accounts from Pawa’s family, mainly from her brother, Air Force Colonel Angaris Pawa, her employers went on a vacation in Iran in May 2007. When they returned, Pawa’s female employer caught her 22-year-old daughter sleeping with her boyfriend in her bedroom. The daughter was allegedly betrothed to someone else. Her sleeping with another man while not yet married would bring shame to her family apart from being contrary to Islam laws. Out of rage, the girl’s mother allegedly stabbed her own daughter to death but pinned the blame on Jakatia Pawa. Pawa consistently professed her innocence throughout the trial and until her death. Her claim of innocence was supported by the fact that the murder weapon did not bear her fingerprints; there were no blood stains on the dress she was wearing on that day; and she had no motive to kill the daughter of her employers whom she had served for five years.
Several other events of late showed the sorry plight of Filipino overseas workers in Kuwait. Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III was reported fuming mad because in his recent visit to the Philippine Embassy in Kuwait, he was not told that there were some 100 runaway Filipino workers living in the Philippine government-run halfway house. He learned about it only after he had left, prompting him to recall Labor Attaché Angelita Narvaes to face administrative charges. Bello said Narvaes misled him about the death of Amy Santiago and concealed from him that there were runaway Filipino workers who were waiting to talk to him.
Then, too, last week, 32 repatriated Filipino workers arrived in Manila from Kuwait. All of them were domestic helpers who escaped from their employers because of maltreatment and abuse. One of them said she was sold by her employer to another Arab who physically abused her. Another said she too was sold to another Kuwaiti who had three sons. She recounted that one of the sons tried to rape her, forcing her to run away.
The way Filipino workers are treated in Kuwait and other Arab countries speaks volumes about their people’s lack of respect for Filipinos. I saw with my own eyes how a Kuwaiti male, the third secretary of the Embassy of Kuwait, spoke and behaved with much rudeness and disrespect toward a female member of the House of Representatives. She filed a complaint at the Department of Foreign Affairs against a former Kuwait Ambassador for causing millions of pesos worth of damage to her house, which he had rented.
I thought to myself, if a Filipino congresswoman can be treated in this manner at the very premises of the Foreign Affairs Office by a Kuwaiti national, we can just imagine how Kuwaitis treat Filipino workers in their home territory. Truth is, Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East need our labor force more than we need the wages they pay. The proposed move to ban Filipino household workers from going to Kuwait and other countries in the Middle East should thus be implemented soon. The Duterte administration, after all, is working to create as many jobs as possible to keep Filipinos workers from leaving. Then, too, an information and education drive must be launched to open the eyes of Filipinos to the unimaginable horror stories suffered by our Filipino overseas workers.
It may be a dream. But if we do more to help the poor members of our society to stay home and do productive work here in their own homeland, we will earn the respect of nations that treat our overseas workers like dirt. In the meantime, the Department of Labor must study how many overseas Filipinos need help in various jurisdictions. It must rid its ranks of consular officers who have no genuine concern for their fellow citizens in foreign lands.
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