Jinggoy wants 17 OFWs forced to eat lizards in Kuwait desert brought home

Senate President Pro Tempore Jinggoy Ejercito Estrada yesterday called for the repatriation of 17 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Kuwait reportedly not paid by their employer since May this year, leaving them with no money to buy food, thus forcing them to resort to hunting and eating lizards and other stray animals in the Sulaibiya desert to fend off their hunger.

The senator urged the OFWs’ recruiters, Non-Stop Overseas Employment Agency Corp., SMA, and Achievers manpower agencies to immediately fetch the workers as he also directed the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to blacklist their employer, the Medco cement and asphalt factory, where they work as machine operators.

“This Medco company, according to information that reached my office, has literally enslaved our OFWs, grossly violated their labor and human rights and actually treated them very, very inhumanely,” Estrada, chairman of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources development and the joint congressional oversight committee on labor and employment, said.

Kuwait’s local television earlier had run a news footage of the OFWs’ plight. With no money to buy food, the workers just survive on donations from generous fellow Filipinos in the area, but when such donations have not arrived yet, they resort to hunting and eating desert lizards and other stray animals in the desert to fill their empty stomachs. They were also left with nothing to provide for their families back home, forcing some of their children to stop schooling as a result.

They were also made to live in container vans in the middle of the desert, some of which have no water supply and no air conditioning unit, leaving the workers to bear the extreme heat in the area with temperatures at times reaching as high as 47 degrees Celsius.

The workers also do not receive any medical assistance. One of them was hurt by a machine but the company did not even help in bringing the patient to a hospital.

POEA Administrator Jennifer Manalili and Deputy Administrator Hans Cacdac met with Estrada last Tuesday and discussed the OFWs’ plight. The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and Labor Attaché Josephus Jimenez have reportedly been helping the distressed workers and initiated a dialog and agreement with Medco for the company’s release of the workers’ salaries and work documents for their eventual repatriation or transfer to other jobs. However, the Medco reneged on its commitments made during the dialog.

“Horrible treatment! This is what the Medco company has given to our OFWs. This company should be blacklisted and forever banned from hiring our workers. Meanwhile, as we help pursue settlement of the financial claims of the OFWs as well as cases against this company, we must exert all efforts to immediately save these distressed Filipinos and repatriate them,” Estrada stressed. –Daily Tribune