Pinay Promised Work as Waitress in Dubai, Ended Up as Abused DH in Egypt
During the observance of the 21st anniversary of the execution of Flor Contemplacion last March 17, human trafficking victim Shera Salva recounted the abuses she experienced as a domestic worker in Egypt in September.
The Inquirer wrote the harrowing experience shared by Salva which began when a certain Edna came to their home in Barangay Holy Spirit, Quezon City, asking her if she wanted to work abroad.
“Someone knocked on our door and befriended my family,” she said. “She said she would help me work abroad, and I wouldn’t spend a single cent,” Salva was quoted as saying.
“We were sinking in debt … I was thinking how to give my baby a life. So, I was very happy to work abroad,” she said. It was her first plane ride.
Little did she know, direct employment was a problematic way of being hired abroad. Because of this, a person is lured to a job, usually fast and with no fees, but lacking in proper documentation.
The promise was lofty: Be a waitress in Dubai, earn $400 monthly. She was surprised then that she became a domestic helper in Egypt, her salary at $250.
Clinging still to her hopes to give her baby and parents a better life, she decided to stick it out with that situation at first, even though her employer would leave her without food, scold her for not doing her job well enough, lock her up in a room and have her sleep outside, she said.
“They would be out of town for weeks, months, and I would be left without salary.”
She recalled the embassy only visited her employers’ home to help them “make peace,” Salva recalled.
Allegedly, the embassy also notified her that she had to produce $5,000 for her release from her contract, which she just could not afford.
Her parents, worried, sought help and found themselves at the doorsteps of Migrante International. The group worked for the speedy processing of her case.
For Salva, signing the document may have ended her claim to her delayed salary and other forms of redress, but it was still a long fight for other OFWs worldwide, said Earl John Pastor, the Migrante coordinator for Quezon City.
Pastor said they were now handling over 100 cases, with the number increasing rapidly. The 6,092 daily departures alone, Migrante said, was a huge jump from the 4,030 when President Benigno Aquino III took office.
“We get so many reports of abuse. If Shera is made to sleep outside their home, many others are even sexually abused, especially women,” he said. Migrante, citing a 2012 report, said some 55 percent of OFWs were females.
Pastor said Migrante is putting a special focus on the Middle East. He said OFWs were being fired or paid less because of the low price of oil, or receiving their salaries in an “ATM”—after three months—basis, even for longer intervals.
Meanwhile, the National Council of Churches in the Philippines also lamented that the situation of overseas Filipino workers had “largely unchanged” since Contemplacion’s death.
“We see Flor in every Filipino leaving the country, which according to official estimates has reached a staggering 6,092 daily,” the Inquirer quoted NCCP in a statement.
“Overseas workers were left defenseless by the government, protected only by their tears and prayers,” the statement said, also noting the cases of exploitation in embassies and labor offices that grabbed headlines then.
(Source: FilipinoTimes.ae)