News

Kuwait summons PH embassy for helping OFWs ‘escape’ from employers

Kuwait has handed the Philippines two protest notes after the latter conducted “serious offenses”, which include conducting operations to help domestic helpers escape from their employers.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs handed the protests to the Philippines ambassador to Kuwait on Friday, April 20, reported Gulf News.

A Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said the protest notes were “related to recent remarks by several Filipino officials which [amounted to] serious offences against the State of Kuwait and [led] to the actions some embassy employees in violation of the diplomatic norms governing relations between the two countries as per the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” Kuwait News Agency (Kuna) reported.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on April 18 that the Philippine embassy in Kuwait, in cooperation with an augmentation team from the home office, has been conducting operations to help more than 200 distressed overseas Filipino workers who have been asking to be rescued.

Executive Director Raul Dado of the Office of Migrant Workers Affairs have been supervising seven teams who have been carrying out rescue operations with the assistance of Kuwaiti officials.

However, Dado said that in cases of physical or sexual abuse, they conduct rescue operations on their own.

The Philippine Star reported that there were cases when rescue teams would go as far as knocking on doors to find abused OFWs who are seeking help.

“Executive Director Dado says his teams would proceed to the given address, knock and request the employer to present the Filipino worker…

“26 Filipino workers have been rescued since April 7 and released a video that showed how two operations were carried out…

“If the household service worker has injuries, Kuwaiti police are immediately called in and the embassy takes custody of the Filipino,” the DFA said.

According to reports, the rescue teams would wait for the worker outside her employer’s home and would use their diplomatic vans to drive them to the embassy or to hospitals, if needed.

Philippine ambassador Renato Pedro O. Villa reportedly said the intervention of the embassy, which is carried out if no action is taken 24 hours after informing the Ministry of Interior, was not arbitrary and that it was a necessity. The ambassador added that the rescue teams have been operating for more than a month now in Kuwait.

Ambassador Villa said that is operation team is “made up of seven members and acts whenever there were urgent cases that could not wait for action from the foreign and interior ministries.”

After the rescue operation, the embassy asks the worker’s sponsor to pay for their salaries and plane ticket to go home.

Related Articles

Back to top button