A new hurdle has been encountered for the return of Filipino domestic workers to Kuwait because a difference of opinion in providing monthly reports on recruitment of Filipino domestic workers to the country, Arabic daily Al Rai reported.
The Philippine embassy request to make a monthly report on all movements and conditions of domestic workers that each labour office brings was refused by Director of the Department for Regulating the Recruitment of Domestic Workers in the Public Authority for Manpower, Nasser Al-Mousawi.
As per the embassy request to the offices to start making reports on all those who were recruited from 2018 and 2019, the labor offices began to contact the sponsors in order to submit the required reports, but Al-Mousawi’s statement regarding the illegality of contacting the sponsor made the offices stop that for fear of legal accountability.
An urgent meeting to address the issue with the Philippine side has been planned tomorrow, Saturday.
The head of the Technical Voluntary Committee to Study the Situation of the Domestic Workers Sector, Bassam Al-Shammari, criticized Al-Mousawi’s statement. He pointed out that Al-Mousawi stated on one of the local TV channels, that “any complaint received from any citizen, according to which the domestic workers office contacted him, should go through the PAM office and should not be done directly.
He stated that communicating with sponsors of domestic workers to check on their conditions is an inherent right of recruitment offices, which are the first points of protection of the contractual relationship between the sponsor and the worker.
He pointed out that the follow-up operations of the conditions of the Filipino domestic workers in Kuwait, by companies and recruitment offices within the framework of their role to periodically follow up the conditions of employment, give positive indications that about 95 percent of the Filipino workers are stable in their work and obtain all their rights, according to what is stipulated. In employment contracts, whether in terms of salaries, entitlements, rest hours and periodic leave.
