The Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) should blacklist Sage International, a Taiwanese broker for intimidating, exploiting and overcharging OFWs of Jia Chiarng Company. The employer and Philippine agency should likewise be banned for the same offenses. At the same time, MECO should not accept the proposal of Taiwan's Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) of a new contract between brokers and migrant workers that would make the former the only legal and labor representatives of the latter among others. Many of these brokers are like Sage International and all of them represent the interests of employers and not the migrant workers.
Lately, according to four complaining OFWs of Jia Chiarng Company Sage International intimidated them for allegedly issuing a death threat to one of Sage's staff and calling on the police to arrest the Filipino migrant workers. This is the latest move by the broker to force the workers to abandon their complaint against their employer for underpayment of their basic and overtime pay. The Manila Economic and Cultural Office (MECO) should provide the OFWs the necessary legal assistance for this latest move by said broker.
When Sage International forced the 51 OFWs to sign an agreement that they would be paid on a piece rate, the workers told Migrante Taiwan that 6 of them who refused to do so were locked inside a dirty and unlighted room until the 45 others assented to their new conditions of work. Before that they said that they were shouted at and the broker slammed papers in the desk of an office.
Other than these, the broker's partner placement agency in the Philippines named Golden Green overcharged the workers of their placement and even broker's fees. The OFWs told Migrante Taiwan that they were made to pay between P70,000 (US$1480) – P130,000 (US$2747) in placement fees while at the same time they were made to remit between P33,000 (US$697) – P65,000 (US$1374) to Golden Green for broker's fees. The workers added that a Golden Green staff was the one who remitted this to Sage International through Elite Express Cargo in its Paranaque branch in the Philippines.
Four of the remaining complaining workers namely Revilla de Jesus, Michelle Hernaez, Leticia Manalo & Evangelyn Ayoc are staying in a shelter and filed a complaint against their employer in the Legal Aid Foundation (LAF). There are enough grounds for MECO to blacklist both Sage International and Golden Green as overcharging under Philippine law is equivalent to illegal recruitment which is a criminal offense. But may we ask why Sage and Golden Green are able to send OFWs to Taiwan up to now?
And more importantly, MECO should not accept the legality of a new proposed contract by the CLA as stated earlier. Besides giving more powers to Taiwanese brokers who have a long record of abusing and threatening migrant workers on behalf of employers, it would also increase the payment of fees exacted from OFWs which are already taken cared of by the monthly service fees migrant workers pay to them. The de facto Philippine Embassy in Taiwan should not make lame excuses that it respects the policies and laws of host governments and/or that the latter is not a member of the ILO to legitimize the sell-out of Filipino migrant workers rights under the new proposed contract.
-- ============================== Asia Pacific Mission for Migrants (APMM) G/F, No.2 Jordan Road, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR
Tel. no.: (852) 2723-7536 Fax no.: (852) 2735-4559 General E-mail: apmm@hknet.com