I Love Pinoys

MANILA, Philippines - After lodging complaints against their Arab employers, at least 49 nurses stranded in Saudi Arabia have been repatriated to the Philippines.

Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia Antonio Villamor said that the nurses were part of a batch of 79 Filipino and Indonesian nurses and patient aides in Al-Ahsa, online news site Arab News reported Friday .

Villamor said the 79 were working at the Rehabilitation Center for the Handicapped in Al-Ahsa. He said they were hired by Samama, a company that supplies manpower to local businesses.

He added most of the workers have gone home.

The workers earlier filed complaints against their employer citing illegal deduction of salaries, contract violation and delay in salary payments.

The embassy took action with the help of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office, which has jurisdiction over the Eastern Region (POLO-ERO).

“In a letter sent to Labor Attache David Des Dicang of POLO-ERO, the aggrieved workers had said that for a long time their company had been victimizing Filipino migrant workers and that their case would put a stop to similar exploitation,” Villamor said.

With help from POLO-ERO, they filed complaints with the Labor Office in Al-Ahsa. The complaints were later referred to the Labor Department for the Protection of Foreign Workers in Riyadh.

After the completion of their three-year contract, the company did not allow the nurses go home, but extended their tenures by two months.

When the two months were over and the workers were still not allowed to leave, they stopped working.

Dicang convinced the workers to go back to work and made a personal appeal to Al-Ahsa Gov. Prince Badr ibn Jalawi to intervene, who immediately directed the Labor Office to coordinate with the Philippine Embassy to resolve the issue.

The complainants finally received their end-of-service benefits and all their dues before they were repatriated.

Samama employees in rehabilitation centers in other parts of the Kingdom also received their pending salaries and benefits, the report said. - GMANews.TV