UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner Visits PH Embassy in Manama Shelter

Dame Sara Thornton (fourth from left) with Philippine and British Embassy officials during a visit to the Philippine Embassy. (Manama PE photo)

MANAMA 29 October 2019 — Anti-Slavery Commissioner Dame Sara Thornton of the United Kingdom visited the Philippine Embassy in Manama on 14 October 2019 to meet with its officials and to visit the Embassy’s Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Workers Center.

Commissioner Thornton, who was in Bahrain to attend the Government Forum to Combat Trafficking in Persons, stressed that her visit aims to gather more insights on the important work being done by the Embassy to protect and support Filipinos working in Bahrain, particularly with respect to running a shelter for distressed Filipinos.

Six residents of the shelter were informally interviewed by Commissioner Thornton and freely shared their stories, narrating that most of them worked very long hours with very little food and no off days, among other complaints.

In a news article published a day after the Government Forum, Commissioner Thornton mentioned that she was able to interview three Filipinas who escaped their employers during a vacation in London, as well as six women staying in the Philippine Embassy shelter in Bahrain.  She commented that all nine women have very similar experiences and based on this, she called on governments to further intensify efforts to curb modern slavery and trafficking and emphasized that employers should be educated that it is not right to ask their household workers to work for 20 hours in a day. END

For more information, visit https://www.manamape.dfa.gov.ph or https://www.facebook.com/PHLinBahrain.