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By Nora O. Gamolo, OFW Times Editor
Migrante, a militant federation of overseas
Filipino workers (OFWs) groups, is asking the Arroyo administration
to call for a discussion of the controversial sponsorship system for
Gulf States-based OFWs, among many other labor migration issues,
during the 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development that will
be held in Manila in October.
Earlier in January, the labor ministers of the
Gulf Co-operating Council (GCC) states made initial discussions on
this issue during the Gulf Forum on Temporary Contractual Labour in
Abu Dhabi, UAE. They will continue to discuss the issue in Manila in
October during the 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development
that the Philippines is hosting.
However, the agenda for the October forum has
already been decided in Geneva, and the forum itself has no standing
committee and secretariat to process such requests, said Claro
Cristobal, Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson.
However, he added that the forum is a good venue
to identify concrete operational measures to empower migrant workers
and to exchange best practices for cooperation of different actors
involved in labor migration.
Migrante has lately joined other Gulf
States-based nongovernment organizations in pushing for the
abolition of the sponsorship system in the Gulf States where more
than a million OFWs are deployed.
One of its regional chapters, Migrante Middle
East, has lately expressed its support to the proposal made by a
Saudi Arabia-based nongovernment organization, the National Society
of Human Rights (NSHR), to abolish the controversial sponsorship
system.
NSHR is an independent non-governmental human
rights organization based in Saudi Arabia. The sponsorship system,
meanwhile, serves as the legal basis for one’s residency and
employment in Saudi Arabia and in other Gulf States.
Aside from Saudi Arabia, calls for the abolition
of sponsorship system have earned the widespread support of
expatriates and nationals of Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab
Emirates.
Migrante is also calling for the formation of a
broader lobby group along with other migrant workers in the Gulf
States to support NSHR’s call in Saudi Arabia and other entities
in the Gulf States.
“This lobby group to be composed of migrant
workers’ organizations in the Gulf States would be a special
formation committed to lobby with host governments for them to
ultimately decide to abolish the sponsorship system. This lobby
group will likewise urge its respective governments to lobby the
same to its counterpart host governments,” said John Leonard Monterona,
Migrante Middle East regional coordinator.
“We are glad to hear from an independent human
rights organization like the NSHR that proposes the abolishment of
the sponsorship system in Saudi Arabia as it would give leeway and
freedom to expatriate workers in terms of travel and the opportunity
to change and look for a better job within Saudi Arabia once the
sponsorship system will be abolished,” Monterona added.
Monterona said that with the sponsorship system,
expatriates cannot enter, work, change jobs or leave the country
until they have permission from their sponsor, usually a citizen,
company or ministry of any state that is a GCC member.
“The sponsorship system requires that an
expatriate can work only for the sponsor and is entirely dependent
on the contract in order to remain in the country,” he explained,
adding that in this system, it is usually laborer’s employer who
issues the visa invitation letter requiring the employee to work
only for the original employer, or the employee’s “sponsor.”
“In essence and in practice, the sponsorship
system is but an indentured servitude; a person under sponsorship
simply called as bonded laborer who is under contract of the
employer in exchange for an extension to the period of indenture,
which could thereby continue indefinitely,” Monterona said.
In the prevailing system of sponsorship as
practiced in the Gulf States, Monterona said that migrant workers
become practically indentured servants subject to abuses at the
hands of their employers in the homes or fields in which they
worked.
Monterona charged that the sponsorship system
emanates from the old social system of slavery wherein slaves are
considered private property.
“That is why we often encounter cases whereby
migrant workers are not given a vacation despite completing their
two-year contract, and other labor malpractices and abuses committed
by employers against the bonded laborer,” the OFW leader
continued.
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