STOP SENDING DOMESTIC WORKERS ABROAD

Since the Marcos regime, remittances from overseas Filipinos have grown in volume and value; the benefits of these inflows to our country cannot be overemphasized. It must be recalled, however, that the deployment of workers beyond our shores was started only as a temporary measure during the Marcos era but the succeeding administrations failed to put a stop to it, particularly the placement of helpless Filipino women as domestic helpers in foreign households where culture, values and religion were alien to them.

Looking back, succeeding administrations after Marcos were blinded by the dollar sign at the cost of our country’s social fabric. So what started as a temporary thing is now a permanent fixture of our socioeconomic life. Today, no less than 10 million Filipinos—more than half of them deployed as household help—are sweating it out in foreign lands to help their families back home to survive.

Undoubtedly, Filipino women working as maids are the most vulnerable sector. Are our national leaders even aware that there are cultures in certain parts of the world where a woman, working alone in a foreign household, is looked down upon with utter contempt?

Given this cultural milieu, is it so difficult to imagine that deploying our womenfolk to such unfamiliar environment would be tantamount to sending lambs to the lion’s den? Through the years so many “horror stories” primarily involving our women overseas workers have been occurring tragically on a regular basis. They used to sleep on top of refrigerators; now they are being stored in them like meat.

President Duterte is on the right track in ordering a deployment ban to Kuwait. It is hoped that before Mr. Duterte’s term ends, the sending of Filipino domestic workers overseas, particularly to the Middle East, would be terminated. I have no doubt that our President could do it.

JORGE B. OSIT, jorge_osit@yahoo.com