RP set to bring home maids from Singapore
RP set to bring home maids from Singapore
MANILA (Agencies): Three Philippine Air Force C-130 planes are preparing to transport Filipina maids in Singapore who wish to return home, a military official said yesterday.
The planes are awaiting landing clearance from the island state and are tentatively scheduled to leave Manila to pick up the workers on yesterday night, Air Force spokesman Col. Cicero Castillano said by telephone.
President Fidel Ramos has ordered the repatriation of maids in Singapore who fear for their safety following a row between the two southeast Asian allies over the execution of a maid who confessed to a double murder.
He also ordered a ban on further deployment of Filipina maids there until the row blows over. Singapore is among the top employers of Filipina domestics with about 60,000, official figures show.
Flor Contemplacion, who was hanged last March 17, was given a martyr's burial by thousands of Filipinos on Sunday in Laguna province, south of Manila.
Meanwhile in Singapore, dozens of Filipino maids were preparing to return home yesterday.
"There have been a number of calls from domestic helpers who said they would like to leave Singapore, and the president's offer (of a free flight) still stands," Corazon del Monte, a Philippine envoy in Singapore, told UPI.
Earlier reports said that some 200 maids were waiting to return home, but del Monte said Monday that these reports were false. The government did not say how many maids were expected to leave, but independent reports said it could be several dozen.
Ramos said the government was also prepared to bring home overseas workers in other countries who wish to return home, a palace statement said.
There are close to three million Filipinos working overseas, the bulk of whom are in the Middle East.
Since the Contemplacion case broke, families of Filipinos allegedly abused by employers overseas have come forward to report the incidents to authorities.
Reports of Filipinos jailed and awaiting execution in the Middle East have also surfaced.
The Philippine's government also said yesterday it was counting on Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea and Taiwan to absorb new Filipina domestics amid a ban on further deployments to Singapore said an overseas employment administrator for the Labor Department.
"We are looking at four countries in the region" to absorb the loss, Felicisimo Joson, told reporters. Of the four, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Taiwan are now major employers of Filipina domestics.
Up to five million Filipinos, or 7.7 percent of the population by official estimates work abroad.
Meanwhile in a bizarre twist, a presidential commission in Manila yesterday ordered the exhumation of the Filipina maid who Contemplacion confessed to have strangled in Singapore four years ago.
The remains of Delia Maga will be dug up today in a cemetery in her home town south of Manila to determine how she died, a National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) official said.
President Ramos formed the commission to investigate allegations that Contemplacion was framed by her employer in Singapore for the murders.
The NBI said an autopsy on Maga could determine if it was possible she could have been strangled by a woman.
In Singapore, a group of Filipino professionals living in Singapore thinks their country has overreacted to the hanging of a Filipina maid for murder, one of the group's leaders said yesterday.
Certain politicians and publications in the Philippines had irresponsibly whipped up national outrage over Singapore's March 17 execution of Flor Contemplacion, said Isabelle Gonzales, vice president of the Filipino Association of Singapore (FAS).
She said the reaction of President Ramos, who called for an investigation into the case, was puzzling.
"We do not know his reasons for reacting the way he did," she told Reuters. "All we want to do is prove to the Filipinos back home that all is well here... Generally, we believe our people have been treated fairly in the courts of law."
The Philippine national fury over Contemplacion's hanging "is probably owing to some manipulations or selfish motives of certain politicians," Gonzales said.
She said Contemplacion was a "self-confessed" murderer. "She gave all her evidence in court that she's guilty. She has never proclaimed her innocence."
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