New Saudi rule on OFWs stirs concern

The Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) said Monday it is studying a new requirement by the Royal Saudi Arabian Embassy in Manila that will supposedly restrict the number of skilled Filipino workers entering the kingdom.

The requirement was included in a memorandum signed by Mohammad Al-Shammari, head of the embassy’s cultural section, abs-cbnNEWS.com learned.

The memorandum stated that: “Effective April 16, all visa applicants, except domestic helpers, are required to submit old passports together with their visa applications. Those without old passports must submit a Department of Foreign Affairs certificate that their current passports are their first.”

The embassy issued the directive in response to an increase in number of complaints by Saudi firms whose Filipino workers had ran away.

Following the directive, Filipino workers formerly based in Saudi Arabia returning to the kingdom under new companies and contracts have to provide their old passports stamped with a “No Objection Certificate” (NOC) from their previous employers.

POEA administrator Rosalinda Baldoz said the new circular was being studied by agency lawyers because an addendum implied that even if an OFW has an NOC stamp, the job category for his new job should be the same as the previous one.

“That seems like an old directive but we still have to study it. We just received it this [Monday] morning,” Baldoz said.

A report in the Jeddah-based Arab News said that these two rules will reduce the number of OFWs that will be qualified to work in the kingdom both in the professional and skilled categories, since few employers have agreed to issue NOCs to departing OFWs.

Manila-based recruitment agencies with pending job orders will now have to choose workers with NOCs in their passports (old or new) and match them with the visa categories supplied by employers.

“This seems to be against the opinion of Ambassador Waleed (Saudi Arabian ambassador to the Philippines) that we should send more skilled workers to Saudi Arabia,” Baldoz said. Julie Javellana-Santos

source: abs-cbn interactive