If you thought slave trade was a thing of the past, you haven’t been paying attention to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
This week, the Philippine government said it has started to audit the Middle-Eastern country after reports that overseas Filipino workers (OFW) were being traded by their employers, and may ban OFW deployment if Saudi does not address the problem.
The kafala system employed by Saudi and other Gulf countries requires migrant workers to have an in-country sponsor. This system is abused by many employers, sometimes even auctioning off domestic workers.
“This is a rampant practice, where workers are handed to new employers,” Department of Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III said on Tuesday.
According to Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Undersecretary Ernesto Abella, some Filipino maids are passed around to different families by their employers.
“Philippine household workers have reported that certain families and employees are in the habit of trading household service help among families,” he said on Thursday.
The practice endangers the OFWs because the new employees they are sold to are not under contract, making them more prone to abuse. Domestic workers are also made to surrender their passports and work visas to their employers.
In a statement released today, Senator Leila De Lima criticized the practice of auctioning domestic workers and said that the Philippines needs to review its agreement with Saudi.
“We may need to review the agreement which we entered with Saudi Arabia five years ago to check whether Filipino HSWs (household service workers) are properly accorded their right and are not subjected to modern-day auctions, as if they are mere commodities?” she said.
Apart from requiring the humane treatment of workers, the agreement between the two countries mandates that workers are entitled to paid vacations and that employers cannot withhold their passports and work permits.
This issue in Saudi came to light just days after the government announced that it will ban OFW deployment to Kuwait, a response to the reported deaths of Filipinos working there.
Earlier this month, the body of a Filipino domestic worker was found inside a freezer in an abandoned apartment, just one of the many OFW abuse cases in the Middle East that the DFA said amounted to 6,000 in 2017.
Like Saudi, Kuwait is also under the kafala system.
