President Rodrigo Duterte Orders Filipino Workers To Leave Kuwait In 72 Hours

President Rodrigo Duterte Orders Filipino Workers To Leave Kuwait In 72 Hours

28 January 2018

Various Agencies

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said Friday he wanted Filipino workers out of Kuwait in 72 hours after a Filipino domestic helper was found dead, stuffed in a freezer in an abandoned apartment in the Gulf state.

Duterte said he has directed the Department of Labour to coordinate with Philippine carriers to provide free flights back to Manila for Filipino workers in Kuwait who would want to return home.

'I want them out of (Kuwait), those who want to go out, in 72 hours,' he told a press conference. 'We will count our lives by the hours because apparently, every hour, there is suffering and agony, brutality committed against Filipinos.'

The Philippines suspended the deployment of workers to Kuwait in January, citing a series of questionable deaths of Filipinos there in recent months.

Duterte said the deployment ban will stay until the government is sure that overseas workers are safe in Kuwait, where 103 Filipinos died in 2017, up from 82 the previous year.

'I am ready to take drastic steps that will help preserve Filipino life and limb,' he said. 'We do not intend to offend any government or anyone. But if a ban is what is needed, then let it be so.'

'The ban continues today and I don't know up to what time,' he added.

On Tuesday, the body of 29-year-old domestic helper Joanna Daniela Demafelis was found in a freezer in Kuwait, where about 250,000 Filipinos work and live. She had torture marks and appeared to have been strangled, Duterte said.

More than 2,200 laborers want to return home from Kuwait, Philippines government says

More than 2,200 Filipinos are ready to take up President Rodrigo Duterte's offer to repatriate workers from Kuwait due to reports of abuse, the Philippine labor minister said on Sunday.

Duterte asked Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific on Friday to provide flights for Filipinos who want to leave Kuwait, after the body of a Filipino worker was found in a freezer of an abandoned apartment.

'We have been informed that as of Friday there were 2,200-plus Filipinos who are willing to go home,' Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III told Reuters, adding that some of them had overstayed their visas and applied for an amnesty.

The airlines have arranged free charter flights, and Bello said almost 500 Filipino workers were due to arrive soon.

The Philippines suspended sending workers to Kuwait in January after reports that abuse by employers had driven several to suicide. Duterte said on Friday that that suspension would remain indefinitely.

Kuwait's Deputy Foreign Minister Khaled al-Jarallah expressed 'surprise and sorrow' at Duterte's remarks in January, saying that legal proceedings had been taken in the cases of the four suicide cases mentioned by the president.

More than 250,000 Filipinos work in Kuwait, the Philippine foreign ministry estimates, most as domestic helpers. There are also large numbers in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The government would help repatriated workers look for jobs, Bello said.

'We are into a re-integration program, we have a program in place for them,' he told the ANC news channel. 'They will be given a livelihood.'

'We are now in the process of looking for alternative markets. One of them is China and even Russia,' he said, without elaborating.

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