OFWs lament long wait for unpaid salaries
Filipino migrant workers from now-defunct Saudi Arabia construction firm Saudi Oger Ltd. are expressing their frustration as they await the long overdue wages from their former company, nearly three months since Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman vowed to pay them.
Some of the more than 10,000 unpaid former OFWs went to the office of the Department of Migrant Workers on Monday to discuss updates on their claims with Undersecretary Bernard Olalia representing the agency.
According to OFW Family Club president Roy Señeres Jr., who acts as their legal adviser, some claimants have already grown impatient not only waiting for their claims, but also on the request of the DMW to update their information online.
Atty. Señeres is referring to an instruction from the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia last 12 January for claimants to update their data until 19 January.
“They have become quite frustrated and disgruntled because of the uncertainty as to when all of these things will come into fruition, because they were expecting that they could claim it before Christmas,” Señeres explained.
“They also find the registration website to be frustrating because the site shows no results, that there are no records of their data,” he added.
Indeed, DMW Secretary Susan Ople previously said that discussions between them and the Saudi government would start last month. However, she said in a video reportedly shot on Saturday that they are still waiting for the final schedule which will be set by their KSA counterparts.
“We were told that a formal notice will be issued for us to come within this month. Whenever that is, as soon as we get these claims, we will all put down other commitments as this is our priority,” Ople said.
In the same video, Undersecretary P.Y. Caunan said that they have requested the Saudi Arabia embassy to extend the registration and updating of information past 19 January, to cater to claimants and families in the provinces who can’t easily access the websites intended for the registration.
Señeres urged the website administrators to make the site more user-friendly for the claimants who are already senior citizens at this point and are not computer-savvy.
“We hope that they could consider making the website and app user-friendly. They should take into consideration that most or majority of the workers here are all senior citizens and not well-versed in technology. The simpler, the better,” the lawyer said.