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| Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III visit POLO office, where he is welcomed by Labor Attache Jalilo dela Torre (left). |
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III ended his three-day visit to Hong Kong on Sept 25 after securing an affirmation of protection for Filipino domestic workers, but no firm commitment on wage and job safety issues.
Bello met his Hong Kong counterpart, Matthew Cheung, on his arrival on Sept. 23 for talks that both sides described as “very cordial and useful”.
But the meeting did not result in any deal being struck on key issues such as higher wages and excluding window cleaning from the list of domestic work.
“We had a very cordial meeting with Secretary Cheung and our talks centered on the welfare of our overseas workers here in Hong Kong. I extended the thanks of our department because our overseas workers are better treated here than in some other parts of the world,” Bello said at a news conference that followed the meeting.
The high point of Bello’s visit was his dialogue with more than 200 leaders of various Filipino community organizations at University of Hong Kong, where he addressed long-standing demands by migrants groups.
But ahead of this, Bello said he had not been officially informed of the OFWs’ demand for a $5,000 monthly pay, significantly above the current minimum pay of $4,200, but added the issue of salaries was being considered.
Separately, Cheung told a local reporter that he and Bello had discussed the helpers’ call for higher wages and a ban on window cleaning duties, but he did not give any firm commitment.
“Of course, we touched on the wage issue and I made the point clearly that in Hong Kong, we have got a regular exercise going on, in fact annually for the last few years, to review the minimum wage level for FDHs in Hong Kong,” Cheung said.
On window cleaning, Cheung said a ban was not easy to implement.
“I made the point that we also attach great importance to protecting the safety of all workers in Hong Kong... Cleaning windows is a dangerous thing to do if you are not careful enough, so what we would do is, as a start, we would step up promotion and education.”
At the news conference, Bello expressed reservations about allowing direct hiring, which OFWs want restored so they won't have to go through employment agencies and pay high fees when they are the ones who find their own employers.
Bello said he was worried that "it might might bring about a situation where we have no more agencies and that all our workers would just be looking for their direct-hire employers here,and that may be quite risky in the sense that if anything happens to them, then there is no way we could address whatever problems they have."
In a separate interview during his visit to Bethune House Migrant Women's Refuge, Bello said he was not aware of the practice of some recruitment agencies of forcing migrant workers to apply for loans to pay for illicit fees.
He said no such complaints had reached him yet, but if there were any, there were surely legal measures to take against the offending agencies.
He said the Duterte government was particularly concerned about OFWs’ welfare because they are the real modern-day heroes who contribute nearly Php 1 trillion to the Philippine economy annually.
“Without you OFWs, the economy will collapse,” he said.
Bello's team included former POEA administrator and now and OWWA chief Hans Cacdac, former OWWA chief Rebecca Calzado, and lawyer Allan Ty of the International Labor Affairs Bureau. They flew back to Manila immediately after the Filcom forum.
