Manila lifts ban on its workers in Kuwait

The Philippines yesterday lifted its ban on migrant workers heading to jobs in Kuwait, capping a diplomatic row sparked when a murdered Filipina maid was found in her employer’s freezer.

The news comes days after Kuwait and the Philippines inked a deal to regulate and protect the hundreds of thousands of Filipino workers who seek higher-paid jobs in Kuwait.

The spat, simmering for months, reached its lowest point last month when Kuwaiti authorities expelled Manila’s envoy over videos showing embassy staff helping Filipino workers flee allegedly abusive bosses in Kuwait.

“President Rodrigo Roa Duterte tonight [Wednesday] instructed Secretary Silvestre Bello to totally lift the ban on deployment of Filipino workers to Kuwait,” presidential spokesman Harry Roque said in a statement.

Around 262,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, nearly 60 per cent of them domestic workers, according to the Philippine foreign ministry.

They are among the millions of its citizens the Philippines has sent to work abroad, seeking salaries they cannot get in their relatively impoverished nation.

The money they send back home accounts for about 10 per cent of the Philippine economy.

Duterte in February prohibited workers from heading to Kuwait when domestic helper Joanna Demafelis’s corpse was discovered in a freezer in her employer’s home.