EDITORIAL - The lucky ones

One of the most disturbing reports to emerge from the overseas employment front is this one about Filipino maids escaping in droves from their employers in the Middle East, most of them crying about labor abuses.

Why Filipinos are falling into such situations is understandable. With hordes of Filipinos leaving for overseas jobs because of despair and disappointment at home, it is possible many of the "escapees" were forced to sign up just to escape without knowing what they were getting into.

As usual, the Philippine government has failed to provide adequate protection to this sector, in much the same way that it has failed its citizens in so many others sectors in so many aspects of their lives.

Even the government's much-ballyhooed ban on deployment to Iraq has been an almost complete failure. Indeed the failure has become such a pathetic testament to Philippine life it has become almost funny if it were not so tragic.

And tragic, indeed, it had been, with the Philippines suffering the anguish of having some of its citizens kidnapped by Islamic terrorists in Iraq. It seems as if Filipinos, if they are not being abused in the physical sense, are being denied fairness elsewhere, even along the dotted line.

The situation of Filipino maids in the war-torn Middle East is simply incredible. Maids, by their very nature, perform back-breaking work with almost no rest and for so little. And yet, the despair and desperation at home is such that they are risking everything just to go.

Frankly, one can almost cry at the situation. Many of these maids actually have college degrees, are in fact certified and licensed teachers. But they have been pushed over the edge. There is not even a blade of grass to hang on to back home. So they fall into hell.

Filipino maids escaping? That's great news. The reports could have been about body bags returning. Or maybe of exasperated souls reduced to the point of committing murder. Those who manage to escape their lot are, in fact, some of the lucky ones.

The question now is whether, in this end game of their lives, the government will continue to be the abject failure that it almost always had been and manage only free repatriation and counseling or will it be able to assert itself and fight for the rights of our wronged compatriots