Chapter 11: The New Challenges to Human Adaptation and Social Change

The story of OFW lives

Hardly had the nation breathed a sigh of relief over the reported arrest of the suspected killers of Joanna
Demafelis — the overseas Filipino worker (OFW) found dead in a freezer a year after her family had
reported her missing in Kuwait — than news broke of another missing OFW.
Family members of Nilda Bongar, a widow with four children and working as a domestic worker in Saudi
Arabia, said they had not heard from her for a year and five months now. Her employer reportedly told
Saudi police in September 2016 that she had run away, but her family said they fear the worst, because
she had previously complained of being maltreated and locked up by her female employer.

The cases of Demafelis and Bongar once more illustrate the dire straits of Filipinos working as domestics
overseas: They risk sexual abuse, maltreatment, even death in their quest for jobs and a better future for
their children.

The stories told by OFWs recently repatriated from Kuwait after President Duterte declared a ban on
deployment to that country are horrific.

They were called animals, recalled one. Another said her employer threw her food in the garbage can and
ordered her to eat it from there. Others recalled being slapped, kicked and punched for the slightest
mistake, just as Demafelis had apparently been beaten regularly by her employers, as her broken bones
and bruises showed.

Aside from sexual and physical assault, a new form of abuse has surfaced, according to OFWs in the
Middle East.

In online messages, the domestic helpers based in Riyadh, Dammam and Jeddah called on the Philippine
government to stop their employers from trading them like slaves. They are moved from one employer to
another, depending on who makes the highest bid, and are traded anew to households that can give their
erstwhile employers the highest profit, they said.

With no contract to cover the job transfers, the women are left vulnerable to abuse, especially because
their employers seize their passports and work visas to prevent their escape.

Before Demafelis, scores of other OFWs had come home in a box, their “New Heroes” appellation proving
to be of no help to them.

Among the most gruesome case was that of Liezl Trus Hukdong, who, her Kuwaiti employer had said,
hanged herself — something her family could not believe.

When Hukdong’s body arrived in the Philippines on Jan. 5 and was brought to a funeral home, it was
discovered that the vital organs — the brain, tongue, kidney, lungs and eyes — had been removed. The
documents on her death were also suspicious, said her family.

There are at least 252,000 OFWs working in Kuwait and some two million more across the Middle East —
the preferred work destination among 24.7 percent of OFWs, according to 2015 figures from the
Philippine Statistics Authority.

Many of them are undocumented and vulnerable, and sorely in need of assistance from the assigned labor
and welfare officers in the region.
The Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration (Owwa) urges OFWs in crisis to seek its help. Demafelis’
family recalled doing just that—and not getting adequate response from it, with the Owwa saying it was
grossly understaffed.

Why, despite the burgeoning number of OFWs in the Middle East, the Philippine government maintains a
very lean staff there is beyond logic and reason.

Considering how OFW remittances account for 10 percent of the gross domestic product (or P1.2 trillion
as of 2014, according to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas), and how the number of OFWs has climbed from
7.3 million in 2000 to 10.2 million in 2013, it boggles the mind that the welfare of these “cash cows”
seems farthest from mind when government functionaries plan the national budget.

Sadly enough, despite Demafelis’ heart-wrenching fate, many OFWs in Kuwait choose to stay, saying the
benefits outweigh the risks they face.

In fact, a group of OFWs reportedly plan to petition the government to lift its ban on deployment to
Kuwait, as they see it as a better alternative to the scarce job prospects back home.

With about 10,000 OFWs overstaying in Kuwait, according to Ambassador Renato Pedro Villa, and some
8,000 (or 80 percent) of them domestic workers who claim to have been abused, expect more cases
similar to that of Demafelis and Bongar to surface anew. Thus has become the story of our lives.

Source: https://opinion.inquirer.net/111405/story-ofw-lives

My Reflection:
The life of "OFW" is not easy, they work to foreign country and sacrifice. They
go and find a job there, so that they will be able to earn money to support the
daily needs and give a better future to their family left here in the
Philippines.For parents who are not able to take good care of their own
children because they are away and for children who cannot enjoy the
company of their parents as they grow. They adjust to almost everything like
language, their way of living, culture, customs ,beliefs, foods etc.

Having relatives in abroad is such an opportunity because not everyone can go

there, work there and live there. Maybe because they don't have enough
money to support the needs and requirements to go abroad. Everyone wanted
to work abroad although it is too far and a foreign country, because they know
that they can only earn big money if they will work outside the Philippines.