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Compostela Valley Rep. Maria Carmen Zamora-Apsay urged agencies regulating the employment and welfare of foreign workers to work harder to ensure the protection of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Saudi Arabia.

She made the call after a congressional fact-finding mission sent to the country reports of abuses on Filipino workers.

Apsay said this sad reality is an eye-opener for her as a public servant.

“It is a personal yet painful validation of what we have long been hearing and seeing from news sources. There is much abuse - physical, psychological, even sexual - and employment contract violations against our migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and something drastic must be done about it,” she said.

Apsay joined a congressional fact-finding mission on the conditions and employment issues confronting the OFWs in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from January 8-13, 2011.

The delegation was headed by House Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs Chairman Walden L. Bello, with Rep. Zamora-Apsay, DIWA Party-list Rep. Emmeline Aglipay and COOP-NATTCO Rep. Cresente Paez.

She said they visited the Philippine consulates in Riyadh, Jeddah and Al-Khobar, as well as the migrant workers resource centers and shelters in said cities to meet with distressed OFWs.

Apsay said their interaction with the workers, mostly domestic helpers, brought to fore horror stories about their subhuman employment conditions; violations of their contracts by unscrupulous recruiters; physical maltreatment and sexual abuse; and harrowing tales of escape from oppressive employers.

“Many of them sought the relative safety of our embassy resource centers and shelters only to get away from abusive bosses. They are also having problems with their legal documents so repatriation is not a sure thing and they may have to wait for a long time before they can come home. The most downtrodden of the lot are those languishing in jails, and some are on death row. There are those who are also crying for greater legal representation. The problem is so complex that a systematic redress by the government is needed,” she said. - pna

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