52 distressed Pinays sheltered in Saudi seek help

Some 52 distressed Filipino women have sought help in following up their cases with the Saudi Social Welfare Administration (SSWA) in Dammam, Saudi Arabia. According to a report on the Arab News site, most of the women used to work as housemaids but absconded for various reasons such as contract substitution, maltreatment, and delayed or non-payment of salaries. Arab News said Philippine Overseas Labor Office at the Eastern Region (POLO-ERO) welfare officer Ron Lionel Bartolome confirmed there were 52 housemaids at the SSWA shelter. Bartolome said many of them thought they were covered by the royal amnesty. “They don’t know that only those who had come to the Kingdom as visitors or to perform Umrah or Haj and who had overstayed their visas are eligible for the amnesty which had been extended until Sept. 14," the report quoted Bartolome as saying. Bartolome explained that the processing of their papers was delayed because many of the women had absconded for five or more years and the SSWA is having difficulty locating their former employers for the issuance of their exit visas. The report said the women lamented that they have been staying at the SSWA shelter for a long time without being updated on the status of their cases. “Many of us have been staying at the SSWA shelter for quite a long time now and we don’t even know the status of our cases. We want to be updated on our cases," the report quoted a representative of the group as saying. The representative said they learned that other housemaids who had also absconded from their jobs in the Kingdom had been sent home to the Philippines. These reportedly included 29 Filipinas at the Al-Nisa prison in Riyadh who received royal amnesty for inmates serving time for non-violent and petty crimes. - VVP, GMA News