Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Vol. IV, No. 30 August 29 - September 4, 2004 Quezon City, Philippines |
MIGRANT WATCH14
Months of ‘Hell’
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LIEZL GUSTILO: Home from “hell” Photo by Karl G. Ombion |
BACOLOD
CITY – “I feel like heaven being home –I just couldn’t free myself
from hell quickly,” Liezl Gustilo told relatives and friends minutes
after getting off from her plane at Bacolod airport Aug. 26. The 22-year-old Negrense from Barangay (village) Tagda, Hinigaran town, Negros Occidendal had been away for 14 months. It was, the overseas Filipino worker (OFW) told Bulatlat, the longest ordeal of her life, spent under the hands of two abusive Kuwaiti employers. And
Filipino diplomats at the Philippine embassy could do nothing to save her
– along with hundreds other migrant domestics – from harm, she said.
She was finally repatriated safely to the Philippines after urgent and
repeated intercessions by Migrante International. |
BACOLOD
CITY – “I feel like heaven being home –I just couldn’t free myself
from hell quickly,” Liezl Gustilo told relatives and friends minutes
after getting off from her plane at Bacolod airport Aug. 26.
The
22-year-old Negrense from Barangay (village) Tagda, Hinigaran town, Negros
Occidendal had been away for 14 months. It was, the overseas Filipino
worker (OFW) told Bulatlat, the longest ordeal of her life, spent
under the hands of two abusive Kuwaiti employers.
And
Filipino diplomats at the Philippine embassy could do nothing to save her
– along with hundreds other migrant domestics – from harm, she said.
She was finally repatriated safely to the Philippines after urgent and
repeated intercessions by Migrante International.
Liezl
comes from a poor family in a depressed coastal village of Tagda, 55 kms
south of this city. Hinigaran is one of five towns in Negros with the
highest number of Filipinos working as migrant workers abroad. Those who
stay work in sugar haciendas or are engaged in small-scale fishing,
vending and other odd jobs.
Hinigaran
though looks being at the crossroads between poverty and snail-paced
progress: There are a few middle class-type houses and small family
businesses – courtesy of trickles of overseas remittances - amid
squalor, depressed villages and undeveloped farms.
Liezl’s
own household lives in a small decrepit house akin to slum shanties along
Manila’s Pasig river or ghettoes along Metro Manila’s esteros. High
tide would release seawaters and submerge the house knee-deep; sudden
waves would shake the entire house making it hard to do household chores
or for the children to sleep.
“Remedyo
heneral”
Liezl
is sixth of nine children of a couple who have been eking out a living
through what is known among the Negros poor as “remedyo heneral”
– doing odd jobs just to make both ends meet. She had to abandon
schooling after second year high school
To
augment her family needs, Liezl, just like the older siblings, peddled
cheap goodies and other items in their village. Her parents broke up,
causing more pressures on Liezl.
Liezl
had her own trouble. She tried living in with her boyfriend with whom she
has a three-old son, Janil, but after one year the man left her.
By
the time she reached the age of 21, Liezl got a job contract from the Al-Fatih
Manpower Recruitment Agency based in this city. In February 2003, she flew
for Kuwait.
No
sooner than she started work as a domestic with her first Kuwaiti
employer, Abdullah Mubarak Al-Candan, than her dream of giving her child
and family a better life began to shatter. On her first day at her
employer’s house, she was told to clean every room – including the
toilets and kitchen – from first up to the second floors. This was
followed by washing the car and doing the laundry. Without taking a snack
or dinner, her first day ended at 1 in the morning.
She
would do the same work load for the next six months, rising at 4 a.m. and
taking a rest only at 2 the following dawn. She only took short breaks to
take her meals. Sometimes sheer exhaustion caused her to collapse inside
the toilet or on the stairway.
At
times, she told Bulatlat, she would be cursed and beaten by the
wife of her employer for jealousy. Apparently, the husband was showing
some compassion for the Filipino’s condition.
She
never received her salary for the first three months because the money was
taken by her recruitment agency as payment for processing her papers. For
six months, all she got was around P5,000. By this time, she learned that
she had been turned over for P30,000 to another employer, Laila Al-Hindol,
a state employee and operator of a beauty saloon, and whose husband works
in the Kuwaiti military. She looked for her recruitment agency to
complaint only to find that the company had ceased operations more than a
year earlier. It had actually been blacklisted as a notorious agency.
Worse
ordeal
It
was worse ordeal for the next eight months. Liezl never knew how much
salary and benefits she would earn. She did all the household work from 5
at dawn to mid-afternoon followed by a work in the saloon as a beautician.
She never applied as a beautician nor trained for this job.
After
remaining unpaid for the first four months, she received her first salary
only in the fifth month – P5,000. Minor mistakes done at the saloon or a
customer’s complaint drew a penalty – her pay was deducted.
She
told Bulatlat in mixed Ilonggo and Filipino, “Paano ko
mapapabuti ang trabaho ko sa saloon, pagdating ko dito sobra na ang pagod
at puyat ko sa trabaho sa bahay? Kadalasan nanginginig na ang aking mga
kamay sa sobrang hirap” (How could I work well in the saloon – I
go there after a hard work and lack of rest at the house? Most of the
time, my hands were edgy because of overwork).
Unable
to bear the hardship and beatings, Liezl decided to escape last April 19.
She made a quick dash to freedom after her work in the saloon – sans her
passport, clothes or a single penny in her pocket.
Her
own compatriots rejected her plea to be hidden for fear that they
themselves would be arrested by the Kuwaiti police for coddling a
“theft” or a “TNT” (tago ng tago, a term coined for
undocumented Filipinos in a foreign country). Somebody escorted her anyway
to the office of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) at the
Philippine embassy.
Narrating
to Bulatlat, Liezl said she poured out all her tribulations to
Philippine Ambassador to Kuwait Bayani Mangibin and OWWA labor attache
Leopoldo de Jesus. She also pleaded that for the sake of her family and
child, she be given another job. Instead of empathy and support, however,
she was reprimanded for her acts and, like other Filipinos in a similar
situation, all that she got was a promise of repatriation by June.
Same
stories
Liezl
said there were more than 300 other Filipino workers at the OWWA center,
mostly women, who shared the same stories of abuse and exploitation by
Kuwaiti employers. She said nobody at the embassy or OWWA was cared for
them like attending to their needs, settling their labor woes or
processing their repatriation. Most of the time the OFWs just waited at
the center.
It
was only late May when Liezl was called by Mangibin and De Jesus. They
received fax messages inquiring about her case from Migrante International
back home in Quezon City. Denying that she had contacted Migrante, Liezl
could tell that the migrant workers group could have been approached by
her own family or friends in the Philippines who had become anxious at
what happened to her.
But,
in the interview with Bulatlat, Liezl said she was repeatedly
warned by the two officials not to tell Migrante with anything that would
damage their credibility and that of the Philippine offices in Kuwait. She
was threatened with being held indefinitely at the center if she’s
caught feeding information to Migrante.
Migrante
In
June, Connie Bragas-Regalado, chair of Migrante International and of its
party-list group, accused labor officials in Kuwait of engaging in
“criminal activity” by not heeding the plight of Filipino workers. The
Migrante leader’s accusation followed by build up protests at home,
compelled OWWA officials in Kuwait to hasten the Filipino domestic’s
repatriation.
On
August 18, as she headed for the Kuwaiti airport, Liezl felt like
“dashing through a narrow gate out of hell,” she told Bulatlat.
All she had was a passport, a $25 in her pocket given by a sympathetic
Kuwaiti personnel at the OWWA center. The Kuwaiti showed more concern than
the embassy officials themselves, she said.
She’s
ever thankful for Migrante, the party-list Bayan Muna and other
organizations who, she said, really worked hard for her repatriation.
“Without Migrante, I would have been dead or rotten in Kuwaiti jail by
now,” she told Bulatlat.
In
Bacolod, Liezl feels relieved for being with her son and family once
again.
Asked
whether she still plans to work abroad, she said “I wouldn’t encourage
Filipinos to work in Kuwait, or abroad. It’s a hell out there.”
But
Liezl quickly recoiled saying “But what better life awaits us here? When
situation remain as miserable than ever before, I might risk my life again
abroad just to feed my son and my family.”
Larry
Occena, chairman of Migrante-Negros told Bulatlat that they would
pursue the case of Liezl, and make sure that “the Al-Fatih agency, which
is a notorious agency, be banned forever and their officials and cahoots
in OWWA and Kuwait, be put behind bars.” Bulatlat
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