Female diplomats now to attend to women OFWs in the Middle East

Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello exposing ‘sex-to-fly’ scandal

This move is long overdue, but at least it is being done now and for the right reasons.

I could just imagine the countless Filipinas who may have taken the risk in the past eking out a living working in unfamiliar places just so they could send money home and enduring not only the painful feeling of loneliness, but also the inhumane treatment of some of their employers.

Time and again we have read about some domestic workers gambling their future in this part of the world – the Middle East – who come home battered, scarred, crazed and times dead in boxes.

Could these hapless victims of violence and abuse by foreign employers also been victims of indifference, neglect and apathy by our own consular or embassy personnel, who are suppose to attend to their needs – urgent or otherwise?

To put it bluntly, could they have been victims of exploitation and injustice and ‘sex-to-fly’ proposition, then, as they are now, by compatriot human predators in the guise of diplomats?

Indeed, there is nothing more disgusting and deplorable than to treat Filipino workers, especially the womenfolk, with utter disregard and trickery and exploiting them when they are most vulnerable – during their dire needs – like seeking refuge at embassy shelters to abuses by their employers and wanting to go home.

The announcement, therefore, that women diplomats/officials will now be sent to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait and other countries where more women OFWs are employed to attend to their needs is reassuring news.

“The decision to send in women is because there are more women overseas workers who are going to the shelters than men. The shelters are for women, not men,” a labor spokesman said.

“They (the women officials) will be able to relate more to women than men.”

I just hope that those involved in the ‘sex-to-fly’ scandal that has hit the fan now or what Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello described as “the Filipino-facilitated sexual slavery of OFW women in the region”, meaning the Middle East, are unmasked and if found guilty, put behind bars.

It is the least that justice can do to the poor victims.