Nora O. Gamolo
OFW Times

Migrante, a militant federation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) groups, is asking the Arroyo administration to call for a discussion of the controversial sponsorship system for Gulf States-based OFWs, among many other labor migration issues, during the 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development that will be held in Manila in October.

Earlier in January, the labor ministers of the Gulf Co-operating Council (GCC) states made initial discussions on this issue during the Gulf Forum on Temporary Contractual Labour in Abu Dhabi, UAE. They will continue to discuss the issue in Manila in October during the 2nd Global Forum on Migration and Development that the Philippines is hosting.

However, the agenda for the October forum has already been decided in Geneva, and the forum itself has no standing committee and secretariat to process such requests, said Claro Cristobal, Department of Foreign Affairs spokesperson.

However, he added that the forum is a good venue to identify concrete operational measures to empower migrant workers and to exchange best practices for cooperation of different actors involved in labor migration.

Migrante has lately joined other Gulf States-based nongovernment organizations in pushing for the abolition of the sponsorship system in the Gulf States where more than a million OFWs are deployed.

One of its regional chapters, Migrante Middle East, has lately expressed its support to the proposal made by a Saudi Arabia-based nongovernment organization, the National Society of Human Rights (NSHR), to abolish the controversial sponsorship system.

NSHR is an independent non-governmental human rights organization based in Saudi Arabia. The sponsorship system, meanwhile, serves as the legal basis for one’s residency and employment in Saudi Arabia and in other Gulf States.

Aside from Saudi Arabia, calls for the abolition of sponsorship system have earned the widespread support of expatriates and nationals of Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Migrante is also calling for the formation of a broader lobby group along with other migrant workers in the Gulf States to support NSHR’s call in Saudi Arabia and other entities in the Gulf States.

“This lobby group to be composed of migrant workers’ organizations in the Gulf States would be a special formation committed to lobby with host governments for them to ultimately decide to abolish the sponsorship system. This lobby group will likewise urge its respective governments to lobby the same to its counterpart host governments,” said John Leonard Monte­rona, Migrante Middle East regional coordinator.

“We are glad to hear from an independent human rights organization like the NSHR that proposes the abolishment of the sponsorship system in Saudi Arabia as it would give leeway and freedom to expatriate workers in terms of travel and the opportunity to change and look for a better job within Saudi Arabia once the sponsorship system will be abolished,” Monterona added.

Monterona said that with the sponsorship system, expatriates cannot enter, work, change jobs or leave the country until they have permission from their sponsor, usually a citizen, company or ministry of any state that is a GCC member.

“The sponsorship system requires that an expatriate can work only for the sponsor and is entirely dependent on the contract in order to remain in the country,” he explained, adding that in this system, it is usually laborer’s employer who issues the visa invitation letter requiring the employee to work only for the original employer, or the employee’s “sponsor.”

“In essence and in practice, the sponsorship system is but an indentured servitude; a person under sponsorship simply called as bonded laborer who is under contract of the employer in exchange for an extension to the period of indenture, which could thereby continue indefinitely,” Monterona said.

In the prevailing system of sponsorship as practiced in the Gulf States, Monterona said that migrant workers become practically indentured servants subject to abuses at the hands of their employers in the homes or fields in which they worked.

Monterona charged that the sponsorship system emanates from the old social system of slavery wherein slaves are considered private property.

“That is why we often encounter cases whereby migrant workers are not given a vacation despite completing their two-year contract, and other labor malpractices and abuses committed by employers against the bonded laborer,” the OFW leader continued.