MIGRANT WATCH

14 Months of ‘Hell’
Filipino domestic reveals ordeal in Kuwait

“I feel like heaven being home – I just couldn’t free myself from hell quickly,” Liezl Gustilo. She had been away for 14 months - the longest ordeal of her life, spent under the hands of two abusive Kuwaiti employers and heartless embassy and labor officials.

By Karl G. Ombion
Bulatlat

BACOLOD CITY – “I feel like heaven being home –I just couldn’t free myself from hell quickly,” Liezl Gustilo told relatives and friends minutes after getting off from her plane at Bacolod airport Aug. 26.

The 22-year-old Negrense from Barangay (village) Tagda, Hinigaran town, Negros Occidendal had been away for 14 months. It was, the overseas Filipino worker (OFW) told Bulatlat, the longest ordeal of her life, spent under the hands of two abusive Kuwaiti employers.

And Filipino diplomats at the Philippine embassy could do nothing to save her – along with hundreds other migrant domestics – from harm, she said. She was finally repatriated safely to the Philippines after urgent and repeated intercessions by Migrante International.

Liezl comes from a poor family in a depressed coastal village of Tagda, 55 kms south of this city. Hinigaran is one of five towns in Negros with the highest number of Filipinos working as migrant workers abroad. Those who stay work in sugar haciendas or are engaged in small-scale fishing, vending and other odd jobs.

Hinigaran though looks being at the crossroads between poverty and snail-paced progress: There are a few middle class-type houses and small family businesses – courtesy of trickles of overseas remittances - amid squalor, depressed villages and undeveloped farms.

Liezl’s own household lives in a small decrepit house akin to slum shanties along Manila’s Pasig river or ghettoes along Metro Manila’s esteros. High tide would release seawaters and submerge the house knee-deep; sudden waves would shake the entire house making it hard to do household chores or for the children to sleep.

“Remedyo heneral”

Liezl is sixth of nine children of a couple who have been eking out a living through what is known among the Negros poor as “remedyo heneral” – doing odd jobs just to make both ends meet. She had to abandon schooling after second year high school

To augment her family needs, Liezl, just like the older siblings, peddled cheap goodies and other items in their village. Her parents broke up, causing more pressures on Liezl.

Liezl had her own trouble. She tried living in with her boyfriend with whom she has a three-old son, Janil, but after one year the man left her.

By the time she reached the age of 21, Liezl got a job contract from the Al-Fatih Manpower Recruitment Agency based in this city. In February 2003, she flew for Kuwait.

No sooner than she started work as a domestic with her first Kuwaiti employer, Abdullah Mubarak Al-Candan, than her dream of giving her child and family a better life began to shatter. On her first day at her employer’s house, she was told to clean every room – including the toilets and kitchen – from first up to the second floors. This was followed by washing the car and doing the laundry. Without taking a snack or dinner, her first day ended at 1 in the morning.

She would do the same work load for the next six months, rising at 4 a.m. and taking a rest only at 2 the following dawn. She only took short breaks to take her meals. Sometimes sheer exhaustion caused her to collapse inside the toilet or on the stairway.

At times, she told Bulatlat, she would be cursed and beaten by the wife of her employer for jealousy. Apparently, the husband was showing some compassion for the Filipino’s condition.

She never received her salary for the first three months because the money was taken by her recruitment agency as payment for processing her papers. For six months, all she got was around P5,000. By this time, she learned that she had been turned over for P30,000 to another employer, Laila Al-Hindol, a state employee and operator of a beauty saloon, and whose husband works in the Kuwaiti military. She looked for her recruitment agency to complaint only to find that the company had ceased operations more than a year earlier. It had actually been blacklisted as a notorious agency.

Worse ordeal

It was worse ordeal for the next eight months. Liezl never knew how much salary and benefits she would earn. She did all the household work from 5 at dawn to mid-afternoon followed by a work in the saloon as a beautician. She never applied as a beautician nor trained for this job.

After remaining unpaid for the first four months, she received her first salary only in the fifth month – P5,000. Minor mistakes done at the saloon or a customer’s complaint drew a penalty – her pay was deducted.

She told Bulatlat in mixed Ilonggo and Filipino, “Paano ko mapapabuti ang trabaho ko sa saloon, pagdating ko dito sobra na ang pagod at puyat ko sa trabaho sa bahay? Kadalasan nanginginig na ang aking mga kamay sa sobrang hirap” (How could I work well in the saloon – I go there after a hard work and lack of rest at the house? Most of the time, my hands were edgy because of overwork).

Unable to bear the hardship and beatings, Liezl decided to escape last April 19. She made a quick dash to freedom after her work in the saloon – sans her passport, clothes or a single penny in her pocket.

Her own compatriots rejected her plea to be hidden for fear that they themselves would be arrested by the Kuwaiti police for coddling a “theft” or a “TNT” (tago ng tago, a term coined for undocumented Filipinos in a foreign country). Somebody escorted her anyway to the office of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) at the Philippine embassy.

Narrating to Bulatlat, Liezl said she poured out all her tribulations to Philippine Ambassador to Kuwait Bayani Mangibin and OWWA labor attache Leopoldo de Jesus. She also pleaded that for the sake of her family and child, she be given another job. Instead of empathy and support, however, she was reprimanded for her acts and, like other Filipinos in a similar situation, all that she got was a promise of repatriation by June.

Same stories

Liezl said there were more than 300 other Filipino workers at the OWWA center, mostly women, who shared the same stories of abuse and exploitation by Kuwaiti employers. She said nobody at the embassy or OWWA was cared for them like attending to their needs, settling their labor woes or processing their repatriation. Most of the time the OFWs just waited at the center.

It was only late May when Liezl was called by Mangibin and De Jesus. They received fax messages inquiring about her case from Migrante International back home in Quezon City. Denying that she had contacted Migrante, Liezl could tell that the migrant workers group could have been approached by her own family or friends in the Philippines who had become anxious at what happened to her.

But, in the interview with Bulatlat, Liezl said she was repeatedly warned by the two officials not to tell Migrante with anything that would damage their credibility and that of the Philippine offices in Kuwait. She was threatened with being held indefinitely at the center if she’s caught feeding information to Migrante.

Migrante

In June, Connie Bragas-Regalado, chair of Migrante International and of its party-list group, accused labor officials in Kuwait of engaging in “criminal activity” by not heeding the plight of Filipino workers. The Migrante leader’s accusation followed by build up protests at home, compelled OWWA officials in Kuwait to hasten the Filipino domestic’s repatriation.

On August 18, as she headed for the Kuwaiti airport, Liezl felt like “dashing through a narrow gate out of hell,” she told Bulatlat. All she had was a passport, a $25 in her pocket given by a sympathetic Kuwaiti personnel at the OWWA center. The Kuwaiti showed more concern than the embassy officials themselves, she said.

She’s ever thankful for Migrante, the party-list Bayan Muna and other organizations who, she said, really worked hard for her repatriation. “Without Migrante, I would have been dead or rotten in Kuwaiti jail by now,” she told Bulatlat.

In Bacolod, Liezl feels relieved for being with her son and family once again.

Asked whether she still plans to work abroad, she said “I wouldn’t encourage Filipinos to work in Kuwait, or abroad. It’s a hell out there.”

But Liezl quickly recoiled saying “But what better life awaits us here? When situation remain as miserable than ever before, I might risk my life again abroad just to feed my son and my family.”

Larry Occena, chairman of Migrante-Negros told Bulatlat that they would pursue the case of Liezl, and make sure that “the Al-Fatih agency, which is a notorious agency, be banned forever and their officials and cahoots in OWWA and Kuwait, be put behind bars.” Bulatlat

Back to top

We want to know what you think of this article.