MIGRANT WATCH

69-Year-old OFW in Coma in Riyadh; 
Another Missing in Dubai

A 69-year-old Filipino domestic is fighting for her life in a Riyadh hospital. Another, a resort roomboy, has been missing in Dubai since April. Their families, both from Negros, are asking Philippine authorities to repatriate their kin.

By Karl G. Ombion
Bulatlat

BACOLOD CITY – With the labor case of Liezl Gustilo who just reunited with her family recently after 14 months of ordeal in Kuwait remaining unsettled, Migrante here has been swamped with similar cases of abuse and exploitation in the hands of their foreign employers in the Middle East. Complainants also accused Philippine embassy officials in the Middle East with neglect in relation to the two migrant workers’ plight.

Ofelia was diagnosed to have a chronic renal failure secondary to cardiomegaly or enlargement of the heart (about three kilos now), with complications of pulmonary edema and hypertension. She has a 10 percent chance of survival, hospital doctors told Philippine embassy officials.

Single-handedly

A native of Himamaylan, a sugar farm and fishing city 80 kms south of Bacolod, Ofelia moved to Bacolod when her husband, a former sawmill worker, died in 1987. Since then, she had to single-handedly take care of their six children and the schooling of two granddaughters, as a dressmaker.

Glenda told Bulatlat that in 1990 their mother decided to venture abroad to make ends meet. At first, they resisted her plan, but later gave in because their mother was “determined and quite healthy then.”

According to Glenda, her mother had worked as a domestic under two employers in Riyadh from 1991-1998 without any hitches and had been coming come for brief vacations. 

Their problems began, Glenda said, when they found through Migrante and the Bahay Kalinga Center in Riyadh that in 1999 Ofelia escaped from a new employer, a certain Noorah Tailoring Exh. El-Nisf Al Akhir, after a year of work. She was the last to flee after 18 workers who had ran away from maltreatment and non-payment of salaries and benefits.

Ofelia, Glenda said, had been at the Bahay Kalinga Center since then until she suffered a heart attack in August this year. Nobody from the Philippine embassy in Riyadh informed Ofelia’s family of her ailment.

Glenda said that they learned from other Filipino OFWs about her mother’s health. Compounding her mother’s ailment, she said, was the lack of food and medical assistance.

No response from embassy

A welfare officer at the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Iloilo City, Marne M. Halanes, said that her office had asked the Philippine embassy in Riyadh about Ofelia. She also sent a fax message last Aug. 10 to the embassy for immediate assistance to Ofelia. There was no response.

Only when Migrante and Bacolod Councilor Dindo Ramos intervened that the Gonzales family found what happened to their mother. They also learned that there are more than 200 other OFWs victimized by abuse and exploitation and now languishing at the Bahay Kalinga.

Fighting back tears, Glenda told Bulatlat that they have had a hard time coping with their needs, and that her own children have stopped schooling. She also assailed the government, especially the embassy and OWWA officials in Riyadh, “for their callousness and betrayal of their responsibility to Filipino OFWs.” They better leave their posts and give it to more responsible Filipino officials, she added.

Missing

Meanwhile, Corazon Pasco appealed for the search and repatriation of her missing son, Wilson. Wilson had left on Aug. 11, 2001 to work as a roomboy in Le Royal Meriden Beach Resort in Dubai, UAE.

Corazon, 59, of Barangay (village) Tagda, Hinigaran, Negros Occidental said that the last time she heard from her son was in April this year. Through a text message he sent to a friend last April, Wilson told her mother he was coming home for vacation. Wilson never came.

Although Wilson’s agency in Manila, Amin Rei, confirmed that he “had left for home in April,” a check with the Dubai beach resort revealed that he had a cancelled flight the same month. Meriden officials insisted however that they knew nothing anymore of his whereabouts as his contract with them had ended.

Migrante members here said that the OWWA center in Dubai knew nothing where Wilson is.

All that Wilson’s troubled mother asks is for Philippine authorities to locate her son and, if found, to repatriate him immediately.

Migrante records here show that as of end-2003, there are 2,856 OFWs imprisoned in 56 countries worldwide - 1,115 of them alone in Saudi Arabian prisons.

Other countries with highest number of imprisoned OFWs, Migrante said, are Malaysia with 390; the United States, 233; and Singapore, 174. Among those imprisoned are 673 women and 50 minors. Bulatlat

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