Published January 29, 2021, 11:58 AM
Senator Christopher ‘’Bong’’ Go on Friday pressed Congress to pass his bill seeking the establishment of a Department of Overseas Filipinos (DOFil) to protect the rights and advance the welfare of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who are considered the country’s heroes.
(JANSEN ROMERO / FILE PHOTO / MANILA BULLETIN)
Go, chairman of the Senate Health and Demography Committee, issued the statement following the reported trafficking of some Filipino women forcibly taken to Syria and abused by their employers.
“Bagong bayani kung ituring natin sila na halos sampung porsiyento ng ating populasyon. Sana naman ay suklian natin nang mas maayos at mas mabilis na serbisyo ang kanilang sakripisyo para sa kanilang pamilya at sa bayan,’’ he said. (We consider them as our new heroes who comprise almost ten percent of our population. I hope we could repay them better with faster service for their sacrifices for their families and for the coun
Sold into Syrian servitude, Filipina workers tell of abuse, rape and imprisonment Updated: January 24
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Print article DUBAI - Josephine Tawaging was being bundled off to the airport in a locked car, begging to be let out. She had traveled from her home in the Philippines a month earlier to find work in Dubai, the Middle East’s glitzy business hub, she later recalled. But her recruitment agency instead locked her in a dark and dirty dormitory with several other women, who soon learned they would all be sent to war-crippled Syria to be sold. As Tawaging, 33, was being driven to Dubai’s airport bound for Damascus, she protested one last time - and was slapped across the face. “They got angry with me and said, ‘if you don’t go, we’ll kill you,’ she said in an interview, recounting the ordeal in 2019. Today, she remains trapped in Syria.
Filipina workers trafficked from UAE to Syria, abused and assaulted
Filipinos in Dubai, UK on 12 April 2010 [KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images] January 25, 2021 at 2:36 pm
Filipina workers and maids have been trafficked from the United Arab Emirates to Syria where they have been subjected to assault, rape, abuse and the withholding of their wages, a
Washington Postreport has revealed.
The accounts and testimonies of 17 women from the Philippines, interviewed by the newspaper over Facebook Messenger, reveal that dozens of workers from the south-east Asian country were forced into being transferred to Syria after arriving in the UAE where they initially intended to work.