Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 30) — The Philippine government continues its move to suspend delinquent foreign recruitment agencies in Saudi Arabia to protect Filipinos seeking employment in the kingdom.
Labor Attaché Fidel Macauyag said the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is “purging” errant recruiters as it targets to scale down the number of agencies to “100 or even less” from the more than 600 at present.
“In a month, 39 errant Saudi recruitment agencies and 18 companies were suspended by the POLO in Riyadh while over 40 employers were already blacklisted,” Macauyag said in a statement Sunday.
“This is part of our campaign to cleanse the recruitment agencies… We do not need many recruitment agencies, we just need a few good ones, which can be our partners,” he added.
According to Macauyag, filtering foreign recruiters will “lessen welfare cases among our OFWs.”
Aside from creating a team of male welfare officers and support staff for distressed Filipinos, POLO Riyadh is also implementing the onsite verification of companies.
Late last week, the Department of Labor and Employment imposed a temporary OFW deployment ban to Saudi Arabia amid issues on coronavirus protocol expenses.
READ: DOLE resumes OFW deployment to Saudi Arabia
The suspension was lifted a day after the Saudi Arabia government ensured that employers and agencies agreed to shoulder the cost of “institutional quarantine and other COVID-19 protocols” upon arrival in the kingdom.
