The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is now a step closer to lifting the total deployment ban for Kuwait after Kuwaiti officials finally agreed to enforce the country’s Standard Employment Contract (SEC) for Filipino household service workers (HSW).
In an ambush interview on Tuesday, Labor Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III told reporters that the SEC is one of the essential provision of the 2018 Philippine-Kuwait memorandum of agreement (MOA) for the protection of HSWs.
Bello said the new SEC contains all the provisions, which no less than President Duterte has endorsed to improve the protection of HSWs.
The document harmonizing the provisions of the SECs for HSWs between the Philippines and Kuwait was signed during Bello’s recently concluded trip to the Arab country over the weekend.
Among the salient provisions of the SEC include making it mandatory for Kuwaiti employers to allow their OFWs to keep their passports and cellphones, setting their meal and rest time, and banning their relocation in Kuwait without authorization from the Philippine consulate posts.
To recall, the implementation of the SEC was among the conditions set by Bello for the lifting of the total deployment ban for Kuwait, which he imposed last month after the killing of Jeanelyn Villavende in December 2019.
Bello said he is now just waiting for the Kuwaiti government to submit the status report on the case of Villavende, as well as other Filipinos, who were brutally killed or abused in Kuwait since 2018, before he decides to lift the total deployment ban for Kuwait.
The labor chief said he had asked for updates on the cases of the Filipina HSWs Joanna Demafelis and Constancia Dayag, as well as the case of the OFW, who was allegedly raped after arriving at the Kuwaiti airport last year.
The Demafelis case prompted Duterte in 2018 to order to the imposition of total deployment ban to Kuwait.
The deployment ban at that time was only lifted with the signing of the Philippine-Kuwait MOA.
Image credits: AP/Bullit Marquez