PH, Israel Ratify Labor Agreement on Hotel Cleaners

TEL AVIV 22 July 2019 — In another positive development, President Rodrigo Roa Duterte ratified on 13 June 2019 the Bilateral Labor Agreement (BLA) on hotel cleaners. With Israel’s earlier ratification of the agreement, this marks the completion of legal internal procedures of both countries and paves the way for its implementation this year.

The BLA on hotel cleaners was signed by Labor and Employment Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III and Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Gideon Levin on 11 December 2018 in Tel Aviv, Israel, three months after President Duterte’s historic visit.

The Philippines and Israel will implement the agreement after the Joint Committee Meeting, which will be convened in August 2019.There will be no deployment of Filipino hotel workers until the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration announces its full implementation.

Labor Attaché to Israel Rodolfo Gabasan expounded on the positive development for incoming Filipino workers in Israel: “We are responding to the shortage of manpower in the hotel industry in Israel and it is about time to introduce the Filipino brand of service and hospitality in the Israeli hotel industry. Hopefully, this will signal the opening up of other branches of service in the hotel industry here.”

The BLA on hotel cleaners, like the previous BLA on caregivers, is a government-to-government agreement which eliminates the charging and payment of illegal fees to private recruitment  agencies in the Philippines throughout the process of recruitment and deployment of hotel cleaners. END

For more information, visit https://www.telavivpe.dfa.gov.ph, https://www.philippine-embassy.org.il or https://www.facebook.com/PHinIsrael/.