Consulate won't give lawyer to OFW under trial in Jeddah - Migrante

MANILA, Philippines – The Philippine Consulate General (PCG) in Jeddah turned down an appeal for legal assistance by a Filipino worker facing trial in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East chapter of advocacy group Migrante International complained on Wednesday. The consulate could only promise Ryan Torres a translator because it has no budget for a lawyer, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona said. The translator will accompany Torres on his hearing on Feb. 17. Torres, a 29-year-old administrative staff member of Resource Science Arabia Limited (RSAL) and working for Petro Rabigh Project, had sought Migrante's help. He said he was falsely accused of distributing fake Saudi riyals. He said the bogus bills were merely given to him as change when he bought something from a store. Monterona deplored the manner in which the consulate’s Assistance to Nationals Sections (ANS) decided not to give the OFW a lawyer. He said embassy officials are duty-bound to give OFWs legal assistance, as mandated by the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995 (Republic Act 8042). "Rejection by embassy officials of a plea by an accused OFW to provide him a lawyer to defend himself in court is gross disservice, not just simply a disregard of one's duty," Monterona said. Migrante urged the consulate to provide Torres a lawyer so that he would not end up in jail by default. "What a translator could do is to convey to the accused what the prosecutor and judge are saying during the hearing and interpret the documents written in Arabic. No more, no less," he said. According to Monterona, this is not the first time Philippine embassies and consular offices have rejected the plea of distressed OFWs to provide them a lawyer for their defense. "So what's the use of the millions of legal assistance fund appropriated yearly in the national budget coming from the taxpayer's money, coming from billions of OFW remittances?" Monterona asked. He said Congress must look into how the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has been spending the millions of pesos appropriated for the legal assistance of OFWs. "It is now perceived that corruption encompasses any branch of the government under the Arroyo administration," he said. "We don't want to think that the DFA and its foreign offices abroad have been afflicted by this very contagious disease." - D’Jay Lazaro, GMANews.TV