The Philippines government has decided to impose a partial deployment ban on Filipino workers coming to work in Kuwait as household workers.
The ban, which comes into force immediately, will prevent the exit of new household workers to Kuwait, while the authorities look into the recent killing of Jeanelyn Padernal Villavende, an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) by her Kuwaiti sponsor, and the actions being taken by Kuwait to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The deployment ban will be partial and will affect only new domestic helpers hired, while those who already work in Kuwait will not be prevented from returning if they are currently in the Philippines.
Philippine Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello was quoted as saying in Manila, “We will declare partial deployment ban which means that we will not deploy new Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). However, whether this will ripen into a total deployment ban will depend on what the Kuwaiti authorities will do to give justice to our countrywoman.
Meanwhile, the office of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has expressed “outrage” over the death. “We consider Jeanelyn’s tragic death a clear disregard of the agreement signed by both our country and Kuwait in 2018 which seeks to uphold and promote the protection of the rights and welfare of our workers in Kuwait,” said a statement from Malacanang presidential palace.
More than 250,000 Filipinos currently work in Kuwait, most of them employed as domestic workers. Incidents of abuses against Filipino workers, including the death of several household workers at the hands of their sponsors, prompted Manila to enforce a deployment ban of Filipino workers to Kuwait early in 2018. The ban was lifted in May 2018 after the Philippines and Kuwait signed a memorandum that provides legal protection for Filipino maids in Kuwait.
In the meantime, ongoing investigations into the death of Villavende reveal that she died as a result of injuries sustained from repeated beatings. Security personnel from the Criminal Investigation Department have reportedly taken the Kuwaiti sponsor and his wife into custody for questioning.
Investigations conducted so far indicate that the wife stands accused of beating the maid, while her husband was not involved. The man who works for the Ministry of Interior is said to have rushed the victim to a hospital where the doctors found traces of a beating and immediately informed the Ministry of the Interior. The man, who initially denied knowledge of any beating, later admitted that his wife used to sometimes hit the maid, but that could not have been the cause of the maid’s death. However, evidence from the forensics department has clearly indicated that repeated beating could have led to the death of the worker.