After learning of the plight of a Filipino shepherdess stranded there for 18 years, Filipinos and consulate officials in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia have set up a bank account for her.
Online news site Arab News (
www.arabnews.com) reported Sunday that Filipinos sympathizing with the plight of Leonora Somera, 65, also promised to shoulder her fare home.
Somera had worked in Saudi Arabia’s Al-Baha area since 1987 without receiving a regular salary. Somera said earlier she is willing to forego some P784,000 in back pay just to get home.
Philippine Consul General Pendosina Lomondot instructed Welfare Officer Abdurajaik Samain to issue a certification letter so Somera could open a bank account at Telemoney.
“I’ve received several calls from Filipinos across the country who want to help. One caller even said they would help raise the money to pay for her ticket back home," added Samain.
Samain accompanied Somera to the Telemoney branch in Balad last Friday and opened an account for her with the help of PNB Western Region business manager Roberto Constantino.
The account was in her name at the PNB’s branch in San Jose City, close to Somera’s hometown in Nueva Ecija province.
The PNB account number is 471-530606-4. All donations for Somera can be deposited at any Telemoney branch in the Kingdom. Only Somera can withdraw the money in the Philippines.
Telemoney handles the Philippine National Bank’s financial services in the Kingdom.
Somera’s first deposit to the account was the SR7,000 (P86,858) she received from her employer more than a year ago when he appeared at the consulate and pleaded insolvency.
Earlier, Somera said her salary was SR500 (P6,204) a month. She said she wants to go home and be with her daughter now aged 24 and is working at a hotel in Manila.
“Please help me go home. I want to see my daughter," she said, adding she “never dreamt" this would be her lot since 1987.
“In the Philippines I was working as a bus conductor when my husband died. With a six-year-old daughter to support alone, I had no choice but to seek my fortune abroad. It was a colleague who suggested I apply to work as a maid in Saudi Arabia," she said in an earlier interview.
Somera said she occasionally had arguments with her employer over her delayed salaries, but to no avail. At times she was so hard up for cash that she was forced to sell some of her goats.
She also said she had several run-ins with the authorities who were surprised to see a foreign woman tending to goats in such a remote area.
After she put out an appeal through the Filipino community that she wanted to be rescued, a consular team visiting Al-Baha in December 2005 rescued her and brought her to the center for runaway maids at the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah.
But while the consulate helped her file a case with the labor court against her employer to try and get back some of her owed wages, Al-Ghamdi never appeared in court and showed up only once at the consulate in Jeddah.
While Somera is ready to go home without having recovered all of her back pay, Lomondot said that she cannot leave until the labor court issues her permission to do so.
source: GMA 7 News OnlineLinkback:
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Topic: Pinay shepherd in Saudi Arabia; maltreated for 18 years (a touching story) (Read 879 times)