The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines is up in arms…
Rene Martel
The Manila Times
The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines is up in arms (and with every reason) over the government’s plan to require every Filipino seeking overseas employment as a domestic helper to first pass a mandatory psychiatric test before they may qualify for recruitment.
“The proposal is downright ridiculous. The number of foreign-bound Filipino domestic helpers with potential psychiatric issues is insignificant compared to the overall volume,” lamented former Senator Ernesto Herrera, TUCP general secretary.
“Some abusive employers resort to basically detaining their domestic staff, and denying them normal access to the outside world. Naturally, the maids risk developing behavioral issues over time,” added Herrera, former chairman of the Senate committee on labor, employment and human resources development.
The Department of Foreign Affairs’ Office of Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA) has “strongly recommended” the mandatory psychiatric test to the governing board of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.
The OUMWA, created by the 1995 Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act, made the recommendation after it gathered that seven out of 10 Filipino maids on death row in the Middle East have had a history of mental illness.
Herrera, however, doubts that any psychiatric test could be properly administered on a large scale, considering the volume of outbound Filipino domestic staff.
He suspects that unscrupulous recruiters and their patrons in the bureaucracy are simply looking to make extra money out of the psychiatric tests, at the expense of domestic helpers.
Every month, the Philippines deploys some 8,500 domestic helpers to various countries around the world. Their top destinations are Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Middle East.
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