Beleaguered OFWs in Poland have come home to safety

Some 49 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have come home after leaving their jobs in a glass factory in Poland over wage and other issues.

The workers said they were promised $500 monthly wage by a recruitment agency in Manila, but claimed they have only received some $346 since starting work in Lodzki, Poland, in mid-March.

They said they are willing to adjust to the difficult working and living conditions in the factory, but the discrepancy in the promised wages was just “too much to take.”

“If we were told that the actual pay would be less than $350, we would not have gone there in the first place,” one worker said in a statement.

The OFWs further said: “The food and living quarters, though far from what we expected, was something we could put up with, but the recruitment agency staff attributing the huge salary difference to fluctuation in the currency exchange rate of the zloty to the dollar was, to us, totally unacceptable. That is why we will be filing our complaint.”

Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) Director Vivian Tornea and Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) Director Alejandro Padaen assisted the first batch of repatriated workers from Poland on the instruction of Department of Labor and Employment Secretary Maria-nito Roque.

OWWA Administrator Carmelita Dimzon instructed the agencies to help document the concerns of the repatriated workers, and prepare for the filing of the cases on recruitment violations at the Labor department.

The expatriated workers are now housed at the OWWA Central Office in Pasay City. The agency is also responsible for shouldering the transport fares of the workers.

A second batch of workers from Poland will arrive later this week. –Bernice Camille V. Bauzon, Manila Times