Our Filipina Women, Modern Day Slaves?

I read it a few days ago in the Inquirer. It’s a good thing Carlo Ople, a friend reminded me of Our women, their slaves by Susan Ople. The problem here is that women who seek employment outside the country keep on getting victimized by illegal recruiters. They end up working in a distant land, cut off from their family, and what’s worse is they get physically abused – sometimes molested… and they don’t even get paid. It’s literally modern day slavery. Here are two case studies of Filipinas caught in the web of modern day slavery.

This is the story of Alice

Alice enjoyed a comfortable living in Hong Kong. True, she was a domestic helper but her employers were kind and she was earning P40,000 a month. When her contract ended, she decided to come home for a brief vacation with her family in Pampanga. She was offered a job by an illegal recruiter who promised her a good employer, a higher salary, and quick deployment to Dubai, a place that she had heard good things about.

She arrived in Dubai sometime in February 2006. Her first employer tried to sexually molest her. She complained to her agency, which transferred her to a different household. Her new employers included an indecent grandfather who kept trying to open her door at 2 o’clock in the morning. Alice learned to sleep with a knife under her pillow and her bed against the door. Fearful for her life and honor, she called the Philippine embassy to seek help but before it could send someone to rescue her, she was asked to pack and leave.

Her agency had sold her contract and passport to another agency in Oman. As she was unwilling to go into prostitution and now having found the strength to assert her rights, her foreign agent in Oman decided to sell Alice to another agent, this time in Damascus, Syria.

From Damascus to hell

Upon her arrival at the airport, immigration agents threw her in a detention cell for entering Syria without a visa. What she saw during her one-night stay in the immigration cell would stay with her for the rest of her life. On dingy walls, she said, were SOS messages crudely written by desperate Filipinos. She also saw a disheveled Filipino woman, with signs of mental illness, being mocked and played with by the guards.

The next day, Alice was released upon the intercession of a foreign broker who then sold her to a Sri Lankan. The Sri Lankan sold her to another agent, a man named Al Khatar. Al Khatar dispatched her to work as a domestic helper for a couple with six children. She was fed mostly kubos, waferlike bread that is staple fare in many Syrian households.

She worked from dawn to dawn, doing everything from cutting tree branches to cleaning the entire house and feeding the children. Alice was hungry all the time, and would often buy a piece of bread when instructed to go to the market. After sealing the piece of bread in a plastic bag, she would hide it in the garden. When her employers went to sleep at night, she would sneak out of the kitchen door to get the bread hidden behind the bushes and eat it behind the locked door of the bathroom.

Despite her hands bleeding from cutting tree branches and doing housework, every time Alice tried to collect on her salary, her employers would reply that they already paid $3,000 to her agent just to have her.

Acting on information provided by TV journalist Dindo Amparo of ABS-CBN’s Middle East bureau and the Blas F. Ople Policy Center, the Philippine embassy in Lebanon sent a team that negotiated for the repatriation of Alice and 16 more Filipino women working under oppressive conditions in Syria. The Department of Foreign Affairs had to pay penalties to the immigration office before the women could be given exit clearances.

Last year, the Philippines opened an embassy in Damascus, Syria. To its surprise, the Department of Foreign Affairs discovered that its original estimate of 6,000 undocumented Filipinos living in Syria was grossly understated. When the embassy opened its doors, its halfway center was immediately filled, and estimates of the number of Filipinos, mostly women workers, was at a more realistic 12,000.

The story of Sandy

Less than five feet tall but with a big personality, Sandy knows how to cut hair and make people look beautiful, having worked in a beauty parlor in Batangas City. Her husband’s meager earnings as a tricycle driver and her desire for a better life for her children, prompted her to accept a job as a domestic helper in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her agent promised quick deployment under a fly-now, pay-later scheme.

In May 2008, upon their arrival in Malaysia, the women were made to ride in different vehicles. Sandy rode in a vehicle that took her directly to the boss of their local recruiter, a Singaporean who lived in a three-story townhouse. She stayed in that townhouse for two weeks until the agent was able to secure an employer.

She worked as domestic helper for a couple that owned three houses and had four children, with another baby due anytime soon. She worked from 5:30 in the morning to 1 a.m. the following day. Her breakfast at 6 a.m. consisted of a single piece of bread and a cup of coffee. Her next meal would be at 3 p.m., comprising of a bowl of gruel. Unable to cope with the demands of her work, she asked to be returned to her agent. She was not paid a single cent for her labor.

Slapped around

After a week, the girlfriend of her agent said that Sandy would be working for a spa. Sandy said she would happy in her new job. Unfortunately, her employer decided to terminate her contract for fear of being caught violating immigration laws. Sandy was granted a visa to work in Malaysia as a domestic helper, not as a massage therapist. Despite services rendered, the petite Filipina was denied her monthly pay. Sandy was told she would not be earning money because she still had an outstanding debt to her Singaporean boss.

Upon her return to the townhouse, her foreign agent asked her to go up to the third floor. There, she was slapped 20 times by her agent. Sandy’s return meant a loss of income as her second employer was asking for a refund. The Singaporean big boss demanded that Sandy admit to stealing money, including customers’ tips that she supposedly should have turned over to the agent. Repeatedly, Sandy denied the allegation, and for every denial, came a slap across the cheek from her enraged six-foot tall boss.

A lopsided law

The next day, the other Filipino women in the townhouse told Sandy they overheard the agent saying he would assign Sandy to work in one of the nightclubs. That night, a sympathetic housekeeper, also a Filipina, left the house keys on purpose, atop a table where Sandy could see it. When the agent and his girlfriend went to bed, Sandy and another companion used the keys to get out of the house and to the nearest highway where they were able to hail a cab that took them to the Philippine embassy.

In both cases narrated above, the victims cooperated with the Department of Justice, Department of Foreign Affairs, the National Bureau of Investigation, and the Commission on Filipinos Overseas, all of which have their own antitrafficking units.

Sandy and her companion filed a case against the Singaporean trafficker in Malaysia and in the Philippines. Yet up to this very day, almost one year later, a conviction has yet to be obtained. Since the Anti-Trafficking Act was passed in 2003, only 12 convictions have been handed down.

While it is true that Filipino women are not the only ones being victimized by traffickers and slave traders, it cannot be denied that we have become a major source country of modern-day slaves.