Filipino expats seek to resolve salary dues

RIYADH: Around 7,100 Filipino workers at Saudi Oger are desperately appealing to both local officials and their country’s embassy to help them resolve their escalating labor problem in terms of eight months’ salary dues.
“I want to respectfully ask our beloved President Rodrigo R. Duterte to kindly intervene and solve this problem and, if possible, send his representative who can talk to the concerned government officials of Saudi Arabia,” a Filipino engineer anonymously told Arab News.
“With due respect to our officials at the Philippine Embassy, who are tasked to help and facilitate the welfare of OFWs in KSA, I sense that something must be done to help us. We are in a critical financial situation,” he said.
He observed that the problem of these OFWs working at Saudi Oger needs immediate attention from their government.
“We have not been paid salaries for the last eight months since November, 2015.”
He said: “It is a very difficult situation for all of us, especially for those who have children studying here. Our children have not been enrolled in school. We would send them back to the Philippines, but the problem is that the company cannot give us air tickets, while we don’t have the money to buy them,” he said.
Those who have applied for final exit visas are still desperately waiting for their end-of-service benefits and pending dues. So far, they see no light at the end of the tunnel.
“I have been working at Saudi Oger Ltd. for almost 24 years. It would be a long story to tell how good the company was until, unfortunately, I found myself among thousands of employees who did not receive a salary for almost nine months,” said another Filipino engineer who suffers from a malignant cancer.
He said, “I am already huge in debt to pay house rental, car installments, house in the Philippines, loan amortization, and a lot more for my daughter’s school tuition fees and more for basic needs.”
According to him, he has had to stop taking his medicine, as his medical insurance was cut off because of the financial crises of the company. “I have no choice but bend my knees before God and entrust my life to him.”