President Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. wants a review of the country’s bilateral labor agreement with Kuwait following the death Jullebee Ranara, the 35-year-old household worker whose burnt body was found in a desert in Kuwait last week.
Marcos made the announcement at the wake of Ranara in Las Piñas City last Monday.
“We are also scheduling bilateral meetings with Kuwait to look at the agreement that we have to see if there are any weaknesses in the agreement that allowed this to happen and to make sure that those weaknesses are remedied so that the agreement is more stronger and does not — will be more supportive of our workers,” Marcos said.
Aside from the review of the country’s labor accord with Kuwait, Marcos also committed to extend aid to the family of Ranara.
“I just wanted to offer my sympathies to the family and to assure them that all the assistance that they might need… for the family and for whatever else, that is my promise to them,” Marcos said.
Ranara’s remains arrived in the country last Friday.
Kuwaiti authorities are currently investigating the 17-year-old son of Ranara’s employer, who is the suspect in the killing of the Filipina HSW.
During the weekend, Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) Secretary Susan V. Ople announced that she will be deploying a fact-finding mission to Kuwait to look into welfare cases in Kuwait.
She said the result of the mission will be used to determine if there will be a need to reimpose a deployment ban for Filipino household service workers (HSW) in Kuwait.
The government already imposed a similar deployment ban in Kuwait in 2018 and in 2020 also due to the gruesome killings of two other HSWs.
The last deployment ban was lifted following the approval of a new standard employment contract (SEC) for Filipino HSWs in Kuwait, which is meant to protect them from abuses from their employers.
Among the salient provisions of the SEC include making it mandatory for Kuwaiti employers to allow their HSWs to keep their passports and cellphones, setting their meal and rest time, and banning their relocation in Kuwait without authorization from the Philippine posts.
Ople, who was still then the head of the Blas F. Ople Policy Center, was among those who opposed the immediate lifting of the deployment ban in Kuwait in 2020 due issues in Kuwaiti government’s compliance to the Migrant Workers Act.
Among the issues she raised at that time was the refusal by the Kuwaiti government to allow the Philippine embassy to run the halfway home for distressed overseas Filipino workers.