Gaea Katreena Cabico (Philstar.com) – January 2, 2020
MANILA, Philippines — It is the failure of the government to address the country’s labor woes that cost domestic worker Jeanelyn Villavende her life, an overseas workers’ group said Thursday.
Villavende was allegedly killed by her employer’s wife, barely six months after she flew to Kuwait.
“We weep with rage as the Duterte regime’s labor export program has claimed another casualty on the back of the high unemployment rate and absence of job security in the Philippines,” Migrante International said in a statement.
In his speeches to Filipino communities abroad, Duterte often says the government is trying to spur development in the Philippines so overseas workers can come home.
Government agencies said Villavende’s death is a “clear violation” of the 2018 agreement signed by both Kuwait and the Philippines that seeks to uphold and promote the protection of the rights and welfare of Filipino workers in the Gulf nation.
The Department of Labor and Employment also set a partial deployment ban following the death of another Filipina.
Migrante said that while Kuwait’s action in bringing perpetrators to justice is urgently needed, the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte must also be criticized for “denying permanent justice to Filipino workers in their own country.”
‘Many Filipinos forced to work abroad’
It was her desire to escape poverty and help her father that reportedly compelled Villavende to leave the Philippines for Kuwait.
“It is therefore the Duterte regime’s stubborn refusal to address the long-time demands of workers and farmers that deprived Jeanelyn Villavende of fulfilling her yearning to provide a life of comfort and security for her family,” Migrante said.
It added: “Government agencies may rush to provide short-term aid to her grieving family but that will never be enough to terminate the tragedy of forced migration that has cost an OFW like Jeanelyn her life.”
An estimated 10 million Filipinos—roughly a tenth of the country’s population—work abroad as a way of escaping unemployment, low wages and limited opportunities in the Philippines.
In December, the Philippine Statistics Authority reported there were 2.05 million unemployed persons in the country as of October 2019. The number of underemployed Filipinos, meanwhile, was pegged at 5.62 million.
‘Cycle of homicidal enslavement’
At least two other domestic workers were killed in Kuwait over the last two years.
In February 2018, the body of Joanna Demafelis was discovered inside a freezer. An angry President Duterte said Demafelis’ corpse “bore torture marks and indications that she was strangled to death.”
Her death sparked a diplomatic crisis between the Philippines and Kuwait, which resulted in a labor deal.
In May 2019, Constancia Dayag was killed in the Gulf state. She was allegedly physically and sexually assaulted before she died.
“The death cases of Joanna Demafelis and Constancia Dayag in Kuwait point to the endless cycle of homicidal enslavement that OFWs go through as a result of the government’s constant peddling of Filipino workers as export commodities to salvage an ailing domestic community,” Migrante said.
Joint legislative probe urged
The Blas F. Ople Policy Center, for its part, urged the Senate and House committees on labor and OFW affairs to conduct inquiries into the death of Villavende and into monitoring systems for domestic workers overseas.
“How does a recruitment agency monitor each and every domestic worker it deploys to the Middle East? How can a labor attaché be expected to keep track of all OFWs onsite given the volume of workers he or she need to cater to? What are the duties and obligations of foreign recruitment agencies in monitoring our workers onsite?” Susan Ople, president of the policy center, said.
She added: “We owe it to Jeanelyn and other victims of abuse to establish the answers to these questions.”
