Dhaka presses Manila
The Bangladeshi government this week sent another mission to Manila to press the sympathetic Philippine government for the balance of their $81 million in hacked funds.
What has been largely kept off the press is that Dhaka’s embassy, while pleading with the Philippine authorities, has itself been embroiled in a minor diplomatic tussle with the National Labor Relations Commission.
The cause? The embassy’s refusal to pay an illegally dismissed Filipina helper.
According to court records, the NLRC last year ordered the Bangladesh embassy to compensate its Filipina employee, Alona Contridas, about P500,000 in back wages and separation pay, representing her 19 years of service.
Instead of complying, the embassy, under the direction of Ambassador John Gomes, again invoked diplomatic immunity, questioning the NLRC jurisdiction before the Court of Appeals.
Contridas, now 50, was hired by the embassy in 1996 first as a cleaner.
She was promoted to messenger but still doubled as all-round he lp in 2010, earning P15,500 a month. Her previously good relations with the embassy officials, as attested by a number of written citations, took a turn for the worse with the posting of the current ambassador in late 2012.
Despite her giving him occasional massages, Gomes, a retired army general, ordered Contridas dismissed effective March 2014, citing her alleged poor performance, repeated misconducts and her reporting late during important embassy days.
Contridas then sued the embassy after she was given only a month’s salary and unused benefits upon her termination.
With the embassy refusing to file an answer, claiming lack of jurisdiction by the NLRC, labor arbiter Joel Lustria found in favor for the dismissed help.
Because of the employee’s strained relations with the ambassador, the labor arbiter no longer insisted on Contridas’ reinstatement and granted her prayer for separation pay, equivalent to one month for every year of service.
Despite the NLRC judgment supposedly immediately executory, Contridas has yet to receive her back wages after a new labor arbiter, Paz Eugenia Neri-Dysangco, effectively reversed the previous arbiter.
Relying on a belated certification from the Department of Foreign Affairs, the new arbiter ruled the embassy officials and their properties and bank accounts are covered by diplomatic immunity.
Neri-Dysangco then quashed the writ of execution previously ordered by her NLRC colleague and then lifted the garnishment of the embassy’s account with Standard Chartered Bank, the latter supposed to cover the help’s financial claims.
The case is now pending before the Court of Appeals, with the maid’s counsel, Rodrigo Ceniza, anchoring their certiorari petition that the embassy and their personnel’s diplomatic immunity extends only to criminal and tax issues, not civil and labor offenses.
The embassy is being represented by Romulo Mabanta law firm, whose senior partner, Perry Pe, not only is the current president of the Management Association of the Philippines but also happens to be an honorary consul general of Denmark. Heard through the grapevine
The Davao-bound female passenger who gave a Cebu Pacific flight stewardess a taste of her intemperate hand has been identified as Ma. Vicenta Carino Tello, a 1989 doctor of medicine graduate of the Remedios Trinidad Romualdez Medical Foundation in Tacloban City.
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