Demafelis’ demise mirrors OFWs struggle

MANILA -- When Joanna Demafelis' indebted family needed money to fix their typhoon-battered home, she followed in the footsteps of millions of other Filipinos and left to find work overseas.

And like far too many Filipinos, her journey ended in tragedy. Demafelis' mutilated body was found last month inside a freezer in an abandoned apartment in Kuwait, where she worked as a housemaid for a Lebanese man and his Syrian wife. She had likely been dead for more than a year.

Demafelis' flowerdraped coffin sat Friday, March 2, in her family home in rural Sara town in central Iloilo province, where relatives, who had alerted authorities in 2016 that she was missing, honored her memory and called for justice.

"We'll miss her. She was so kind to all of us," her brother Joejet Demafelis said, adding hundreds of relatives and friends came on the eve of her burial.

Her slaying is the latest tragedy to befall an overseas worker from the Philippines, where about a tenth of the nation's 100 million people toil in more than 200 countries worldwide to provide for families back home.

Last year, those workers sent home more than $31 billion, accounting for 10 percent of the country's gross domestic product.

Officials warn Demafelis' death won't be the last. They say a dangerous mix of poverty, spotty enforcement of labor laws, difficult conditions especially in Arab nations, and the logistical nightmare of watching over huge numbers of workers abroad means other tragedies are inevitable. AP