Dubai: Pay and treat your Filipino housemaids right or risk losing their services was the key message imparted at the first meeting between the new Philippine labour attache and more than 80 foreign placement agencies responsible for recruiting housemaids to Dubai and the northern emirates.
Labour attache Delmer Cruz recently met with more than 120 representatives of foreign placement agencies (FPAs) at the Philippine Overseas Labour Office (Polo) in Al Ghusais to discuss issues over labour contracts — especially in paying the minimum wage of $400 (Dh1,469) set by the Philippine government — and reports of maltreatment.
“We have noted that many employers are flouting the rules, especially when it comes to paying proper wages of $400 to our household service workers. The practice is just a matter of ‘paper compliance’ for many of them,” Cruz told Gulf News.
“The meeting was a levelling off between us and the agencies and to have a dialogue so they would know that we are introducing all these changes as part of the marching orders of [Philippine] labour secretary Rosalinda Baldoz, to strictly implement policy reforms for household service workers which took effect late 2006,” Cruz added.
Cruz reminded the FPAs at last week’s meeting that it was their responsibility to make sure employers were willing to pay the right wages or else risk not being able to hire Filipino housemaids in the future.
“We periodically send reports to the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency in Manila and those agencies with many violations could have their counterpart agency in Manila be sanctioned with a preventive suspension pending investigation, and worse, permanent blacklisting,” Cruz said.
In September, Cruz said that his office prepared a new watch list detailing the track record of more than 80 placement agencies operating in the UAE between January and August this year.
Around 45 of these agencies were found to have been lax on regulations or had cases of runaway maids and were ranked according to the severity of violations. The 15 agencies that had the most runaways are being closely monitored. All their transactions are being held off until complaints are resolved.
More than 110 Filipinos have sought shelter at the Filipino Workers Resource Centre, a half-way house for distressed Filipinos run by Polo. Many of them are housemaids who complained of unjust work hours, ill-treatment, and non-payment of wages.
Cruz said his office will randomly check on employed housemaids to make sure their rights and welfare are being safeguarded.
Cruz clarified that he was not introducing new rules but was actually just strictly enforcing existing rules. FPAs present at the event welcomed Polo’s move.
“We are also amenable to what the new labour attache said to us particularly on the salary aspect because this is the biggest problem of housemaids,” a representative from Al Lujain Recruitment Services told Gulf News.
“We will support this move but we hope that a second round of dialogue be held to tackle other pending issues especially the welfare of workers,” she added.
