PH Embassy in Abu Dhabi Repatriates 128 Distressed Filipinos Under UAE’s Amnesty Program

ABU DHABI 31 August 2018 - The Philippine Embassy in Abu Dhabi repatriated 128 distressed Filipinos on 28 July 2018, the first mass repatriation conducted by the Embassy under the United Arab Emirates government’s amnesty program for foreign nationals.  

Many of those are illegal recruitment victims who were repatriated by the Embassy, with the help of the Office of Migrant Workers Affairs of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila.

The UAE Government is currently implementing a three-month-long amnesty period, from 01 August 2018 to 31 October 2018, which offers overstaying and/or absconded expatriates the chance to rectify their immigration status and apply for a six-month-long jobseeker’s visa or to return to their home countries with their immigration fines waived.

The Philippine Government, through the Embassy in Abu Dhabi and the Consulate General in Dubai, are assisting Filipinos during this period whether they opt to stay in the UAE for a jobseeker’s visa or opt to return to the Philippines.

With the signing of the UAE Law for Domestic Workers and the Memorandum of Understanding on Labor Cooperation between the Philippines and the UAE last year, the Embassy hopes that incidents of abuse, maltreatment, detention, and other complaints by Filipino Household Service Workers (HSWs) will significantly go down.

The UAE government has also implemented measures to ensure and enhance the rights of HSWs in the UAE, such as the transfer of jurisdiction of HSWs from the Ministry of Interior to the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation to allow them rights on dispute resolution, and the opening of Tadbeer Centers that will conduct recruitment of expatriate workers seeking to work in the UAE, and assuring the said workers of protection under UAE law.

Since January 2018, the Embassy has repatriated 1,198 Filipino nationals, 821 of whom stayed at the Embassy shelter and 377 were walk-in clients. END

For more information, visit www.abudhabipe.dfa.gov.ph or www.facebook.com/PHinUAE.