Mohammed Palani: Jobless and Separated from Family

Mohammed Palani went to Sabah, Malaysia in 1988 to work as a construction worker. He has since settled there with his wife and three kids.

Mohammed had had no problem staying in Sabah since he entered the country legally and had all the necessary papers. When his working permit expired in 1992, he was assured that his employers would process his working papers for him.

It therefore came as a surprise when the Malaysian police arrested Mohammed one day for working with an expired work permit. Along with other Filipinos, he was carted off to jail without being given the opportunity to inform his family of his arrest. In jail, Mohammed witnessed the indiscriminate brutality of the police toward Filipino detainees. He too suffered from physical and verbal abuse, as well as the lack of food and other necessities. Then in September last year, Palani was put on a jam-packed ship and sent back to the Philippines, with nothing but the clothes on his back.

The journey was only the start of many troubles for Mohammed. With no word about his family in Sabah, and no relatives whom he could contact in the Philippines, Mohammed was at a total loss on what to do when he arrived in Sulu. At the temporary shelter, the conditions were only a little less miserable than on the ship and in the Sabah jail. Mohammed had no money with which to get himself at least a change of clothes, and the supply of food for the refugees was meager and far in between. With nowhere to go, he decided to join friends who eventually moved in with relatives in Tawi-tawi.

In Tawi-tawi, he set himself to work as an extra hand in a construction project at a school. His plan was to try to earn enough money to go back to Sabah and look for his family. His luck, however, failed him again, when he injured his hand in an accident.

Penniless and unable to work, Mohammed is now helplessly stranded in Tawi-tawi. Worry for the family he left in Sabah consumes his thoughts everyday, and the hope that he will one day be reunited with them is the only thing that keeps him from falling into despair. Bulatlat.com

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