The government is headed for a repeat of the May 2018 diplomatic impasse with Kuwait following the latest extraction of a distressed Filipina domestic helper from the household of her Kuwaiti employer.
DFA Undersecretary Brigido Dulay Jr. confirmed that Philippine Embassy personnel rescued Delia Solomon whose complaint of being maltreated by her employer has gone viral in social media.
“While a distressed OFW’s plea was going viral in social media yesterday, our Kuwait PE (Philippine Embassy) worked quietly on extracting her,” Dulay said in a tweet Saturday.
Dulay added that Solomon is now housed at the embassy pending her repatriation back to the Philippines.
This latest incident of a rescue effort by the government on distressed OFWs in Kuwait did not go unnoticed in Kuwait as local newspapers called the case of Solomon as a “trivial and petty” that emanated from her reportedly being prevented by her employer from eating eggs.
“Although the Philippine Embassy focuses on to protect its workers and to solve the crisis of recent ban of their workers from the Philippines to Kuwait, the Philippine Embassy also plays role of resolving issues between the workers and the sponsors where in some cases it takes appropriate action to return the worker to her country by harboring a domestic worker who complains about her sponsor,” said a report from Arab News, a Kuwaiti English news daily.
In May 2018, Philippine Embassy personnel, together with some officials from the DFA-Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs, conducted a rescue mission on a distressed OFW.
The Kuwaiti government was angered when then DFA Assistant Secretary for Public Information Elmer Cato circulated video footage showing the rescue of the OFW right from the house of her employer. (Roy Mabasa)
