THE decision of the Saudi government to suspend the hiring of Filipino domestic workers is yet another proof of the urgent need to rationalize the entire labor-export policy of a government that has relied on its foreign-based workers to shore up the economy for more than three decades.

Offhand, reports said Riyadh’s decision was apparently impelled by, among other things, Manila’s earlier decision—a tough but well-intentioned reform, as we explained in an earlier editorial—to set a floor of $400 on the monthly wages of Filipino domestic help; and a more recent requirement, the submission by potential Saudi employers of the exact location maps of the addresses where the Filipino hires will be placed. The last one is apparently part of an attempt by Philippine labor authorities to keep better track of Filipinos, especially if they are subjected to abuse or exploitation.

John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator, believes it’s not the floor wage that is the deal breaker here. He thinks the Saudi government imposed the ban because of “the requirement asked by the Philippine Overseas Labor Offices [Polo] in Saudi Arabia requiring Saudi employers to submit a detailed sketch of their house address before a job order is approved, which aim is to pinpoint whose household our OFW-DH is working for [so] that she could easily be traced and rescued in case she has been a victim of abuse and maltreatment.”

According to Monterona, prospective Saudi employers conveyed sometime in January their opposition to the Saudi National Recruitment Committee (Sanarcom), an organization of recruitment agents, regarding this requirement.

“In fact, the Sanarcom had written the Philippine Embassy and Polo in Riyadh expressing its opposition [to] this policy and threatened to stop hiring OFW-DH if this would be made a requirement, as it violates Saudi employers’ right to privacy as stated in the host government’s local laws,” Monterona said.

The Saudi government went on to issue a “note verbale” to the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh, saying, the  “processing and verification of household service workers have been stopped until further notice.”

Yet, from Manila’s point of view, it shouldn’t be such a big deal because Philippine authorities are simply intensifying their efforts to better monitor OFWs in the kingdom and take better care of them. It’s a preemptive move to stem the tide of abuse that has kept so many Philippine officials busy and distracted from other duties.

This incident, following the suspension—mercifully lifted—of the hiring of OFWs by Taiwanese authorities miffed by the February deportation of 14 Taiwanese fraud suspects to Beijing, despite Taipei’s objections, indicates how much of our economic underside is exposed to geopolitics and other cultural complexities in host countries. Months before the row with Taiwan, OFWs also became cannon fodder after Chinese and Hong Kong authorities, and even HK residents, vented their anger for the killing of eight Hong Kong tourists by a disgruntled ex-police officer in the botched hostage rescue at Rizal Park.

There’s a difference, though, between the fallout in Hong Kong and Taiwan, on the one hand, and the Saudi government’s reaction to Philippine labor reforms, on the other. The short-lived hostile reactions against OFWs in Taiwan and Hong Kong were part of an expected fallout from ugly incidents. The one in Saudi is a reaction to deliberate reforms laid down by Manila’s labor authorities.

In Monterona’s opinion, the Saudi case shows the dilemma of the Philippine government’s “lucrative business of peddling its cheap human labor sans protection of their well-being, rights and welfare.” In short, a clash of competing interests.

The Saudi policy clash will test Manila’s political will and its ability to balance its long, vital relations with a friendly government, on the one hand, and its need to promote the welfare of its citizens, on the other.

Saudi authorities may genuinely feel it’s in their interest to oppose the requirement for specific addresses and visual representations of work sites, and no one can begrudge them that, especially if they have tight privacy laws. But they cannot also begrudge Philippine officials for pushing the envelop in terms of better protecting the OFWs, or risk being described—as they are, in fact, being described by private groups like Migrante—as viewing workers as mere commodity for export and revenue.

At the very least, the Saudi case may yet be a blessing in disguise for Manila, because it could hasten the reforms that began with the controversial decision two years ago to set floor wages for domestic workers in the Middle East and other parts of the world. It could hasten the rationalization of the labor-export policy, a process so crucial now that tens of thousands of OFWs are coming home from conflict-ridden parts of North Africa and the Middle East and there is so much talk about looking for alternative jobs for them.

A review of the trends that marked our deployment to Saudi Arabia may shed some light. In the 1970s, when the government first deployed Filipino workers to the kingdom, the majority of the overseas contract workers (OCWs, as they were then called) were skilled like engineers, mechanics, architects, doctors and nurses. In the 1980s and 90s, however, a flood of “cheap hires” marred the deployment, as millions of low-skilled, barely educated, domestic workers went to Saudi and neighboring Arab countries. For a time, quantity seemed to have replaced quality of jobs, so much so that even while the numbers of the deployed kept rising, the aggregate of their remittances remained stagnant, even as reports of abuse and mistreatment soared. This gave rise to an observation by some experts about the “feminization of the OFW exodus” and the “feminization of poverty.” Hence, the reforms of recent years imposed by Philippine labor authorities.

Monterona, who estimates that 80,000 Filipino service workers are deployed annually to the kingdom, has an interesting question: Can Manila assert its political will in the face of the Saudi suspension, or blink?

But since both Saudi Arabia and the Philippines benefit from the labor export, both should negotiate from a position that getting the best from the workers requires, occasionally, some game change.