President Duterte ordered the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to bring home undocumented Overseas Filipino Workers.
In a speech on Thursday, the President also instructed DSWD Secretary Joselito Bautista to craft a “bigger” program to help OFWs.
“My orders are really to get them. You should know where to fish for them. And return them to the water because they are fish,” the President said.
President Duterte also lamented the abuse of OFWs, particularly in the Middle East. He said some cultural practices by Arabs allow slavery to continue.
He said there are Arab tribes where slaves are tasked to do all the work in the home and eat from the leftovers of the family they serve.
In some cases, the President said, slaves and other workers who are paid to do work are also sexually abused. This, he said, is the reason why many OFWs commit suicide.
“That’s the reason why some of our countrymen just jump out of the window. The highest rate of foreign workers (who commit) suicide. They cannot just endure maybe the human degradation,” Duterte said.
In another speech on Thursday, the President also lashed out on illegal recruiters saying he is placing them on the level of shabu dealers.
In both speeches, he shared the story of three sets of parents in Davao who sought his help when their children disappeared after they became OFWs. They have not heard from their children for three years.
He said the three teenagers aged 16 and 17 were able to go abroad using falsified documents, including birth certificates. This, he said this incident was back in the 1990s, before the year 2000 when he was still Mayor of Davao.
After hearing the story of the parents, the President said he sought help from the Speaker of the House at the time who gave him the “green light” to go to the Middle East.
When he arrived, the President said he found that the three teenagers were recruited to work in Yemen and then to Sudan. That was the last information he and the parents of the teenagers learned of their whereabouts.
“(This is a) particular incident na galit ako talaga sa [when I got mad at a] recruiter or yung recruitment people na ginawa nilang gago ang Pinoy, dyan ako galit [they made a fool out of Filipinos, that’s why I got angry],” the President said.