Protest Actions

Aside from following up their cases, victims of Annasban company also conducted protest actions to call attention to their plight. Some stormed the office of the Department of Labor and Employment last February 25 and held a camp-out outside the office of the Overseas Workers Welfare Association in Pasay City from March 3 to 5, 2010.

“We are forming this human chain to show that we are never again allowing ourselves to be deceived by the government that abandoned us when we were being treated like slaves abroad, and continue to treat us like dirt in our own country,” Joy Flancia, one of the victims of Annasban, said during the camp out.
“The case of the Annasban workers is just an example of how the OWWA Omnibus Policies, enacted in 2003, severely limited the assistance the government gives to OFWs to the point of inutility. It tested the limits of our patience, and pushed us to militant forms of struggle, such as this historic camp-out,” Martinez said in a statement.
During their three-day camp out at the OWWA, they were promised by OWWA officials that each of them would receive P10,000 ($218). They were told to go to the National Reintegration Center for OFWs (NCRO). They did but were later told by NRCO director Louie Reyes that they would not be given cash but a starter kit for small businesses.

Ailyn Abdula, a staff of Migrante, told Bulatlat that the victims may only avail of it from the regional offices of OWWA. “It’s clear that they just want to send off these victims to their respective provinces,” she said. Migrante is requesting for the starter kit to be converted to cash, “because it is what the OFWs really need.”

More Struggles

Migrante International and the victims of Annasban said that after all that they have been through, they are proud of what they have achieved so far. Martinez told Bulatlat that he is commending Alfonso de Castro, head of POEA Repatriation Unit, who went the extra mile to suspend the job orders coming from Annasban. “If only this was done earlier, it could have saved more lives,” he said.

But Martinez and the victims and kin of Annasban workers are not even halfway of what they are struggling for. Martinez told Bulatlat that aside from pushing for a permanent ban on job orders from Annasban, they are fighting for the revocation of the license of private recruitment agencies thats have failed to provide assistance to OFWs they have sent abroad.

Victims of Annasban are also demanding for economic justice: the payment of the salaries that were not given to them plus moral damages to compensate for the injustices that have been done to them. .

In an interview with OWWA administrator Carmelita Dimson, she said their labor representative in Saudi Arabia had already negotiated with Annasban regarding the concerns of the OFWs. “The only thing that the Annasban did not agree to is the payment of their salaries (because) they signed another contract there,” she said, “Under Saudi Laws, there is no such thing as contract substitution.”

She advised OFWs not to hold sit-down strikes or hunger strikes as it would not help resolve the problem. “Our kababayans (compatriots) think that once they go on hunger strike the employer would hear their concerns,” she said.

As for the benefits of the repatriated OFWs, Dimson said, those do not wish to work abroad again may avail of a loan from OWWA to start a small business, while their labor cases are be taken cared of by the POEA. But Martinez said the workers should get the full payment for the unexpired portion of their contracts including the compensation for forcibly detaining them and for other forms of maltreatment, adding that this is not the first time that the government has allowed the repatriation of OFWs without just compensation.

Martinez said there are still other Filipinos left in Annasban, enduring the exploitative and difficult conditions. Some, according to Martinez, are also planning to stop working to be repatriated like the others. Only this week, another 24 OFWs working under Annasban have already expressed their wish to be repatriated.

“They (victims of Annasban who are already home) really want the government to stop deploying OFWs through Annasban so that others would no longer go through what all of them have experienced,” Martinez said. (Bulatlat.com)

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