Saudi Arabia is set to pay $4.6 billion in back wages and end-of-contract fees to overseas Filipino workers who were repatriated to the Philippines after they weren’t paid their salaries, the Philippines’ labor chief said Monday.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said these are OFWs who did not receive their pay and end of service fees as early as 2015.
“President Duterte directed me to repatriate all of them, probably about 10,000 to 11,000 of them. We brought them home…but before we did that, we authorized a lawyer to pursue their claims against their employees,” Bello recounted.
The OFWs eventually won their case, but their dues were not yet awarded them, the Labor secretary said.
“Because of this, no less than President Duterte sent a personal letter to his highness King Salman of the kingdom, twice. Unfortunately, there was no positive response. Now we thought, I thought that [it’s] high time that our workers should be given justice by paying their claims, their valid claims.”
“So with that I came up with a proposal to the board of the (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration) of considering a deployment ban in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia until they settle this account,” Bello explained.
“Probably this triggered some reaction from them,” he noted.
A statement on the Department of Labor and Employment website posted Sunday said that Bello met with his Saudi counterpart Ahmed al-Rajhi privately ahead of the Abu Dhabi Dialogue, where the latter appealed for the lifting of the suspension on Arab mega recruitment agencies which were responsible for the deployment of OFWs whose salaries and benefits remained unpaid.
“And in that meeting he assured me that when he will be coming on January 2022, he will come up, he’ll probably come up with a positive result,” Bello said.
The Labor chief said he requested al Rajhi for the claims to be settled this December.
“And the minister graciously acceded to my request. So hopefully by, on or before December there will be some positive result,” he said.
Bello said there are about a million OFWs in Saudi Arabia.
