Philippines, China to ink deal on Filipino labor migration — labor chief
The Department of Labor and Employment last month barred Filipinos from seeking work in Kuwait over reports of widespread abuse. File photo
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and China are set to forge a bilateral deal facilitating the deployment of Filipino migrant workers to Beijing, Manila’s labor chief said a day after President Rodrigo Duterte fumed at the death of an overseas Filipino worker in Kuwait.
“We will sign a bilateral agreement with China on OFW deployment,” Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III was quoted as saying in a GMA News report on Saturday.
Bello said both sides were supposed to ink the deal on the sidelines of Manila’s hosting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations last November, but the Chinese government asked for more time to review the agreement.
“But now we will proceed with the signing,” Bello said.
The president earlier said he would ask China to "open its doors" for Filipino migrant workers, adding that Beijing is in need of teachers and domestic helpers.
The labor department last month barred Filipinos from seeking work in Kuwait over reports of widespread abuse.
READ: DOLE suspends deployment of workers to Kuwait
In a press conference on Friday, Duterte said the suspension of deployment of OFWs to Kuwait “continues today and I don’t know up to what time.”
READ: Duterte tells Kuwait: 'Filipinos are not slaves'
That was after a dead Filipino woman was found in a freezer at an abandoned apartment in the Gulf state, where over two million Filipinos—many of them maids—are employed, helping boost the Philippine economy with billions of dollars in salary remittances to their families each year.
Last month, New York-based Human Rights Watch cautioned the Philippine government about the nation's plan to ban labor migration to the Middle East, saying such a policy would force Filipino workers to take greater risks to seek overseas employment.
The HRW recommended that the Philippines should instead demand stronger protections for overseas Filipino workers.
"They should advocate for an end to the abusive kafala (visa sponsorship) system which ties migrant workers to their employers and prohibits them from leaving or changing jobs without their employer’s permission," it said.
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