Filipino Welfare Officer in Jeddah Ready to Leave after Shame Game
COMMUNITY MEETING: Philippine Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello, seated 3rd left, and other officials are seen in a dialogue with unpaid Filipino workers of Saudi Oger at a compound in Jeddah last month. Welfare Officer Angel Cruz Jr., the facilitator, is not seen in the photo. (Courtesy of Saudi Oger workers)
JEDDAH: A welfare officer at the Philippine Consulate in Jeddah on Wednesday asked their home office in Manila to relieve him immediately of his responsibilities after being accused of wrongdoing by Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello.
Angel Cruz Jr. said he felt he can no longer “function effectively” in his duties as coordinating welfare office and disbursing officer after being shamed in public.
In a live television interview on Monday, Bello said he was ordering the immediate recall of Cruz, citing complaints that the welfare officer was “extorting” from OFWs and of “pimping” women.
In a phone interview with Arab News on Wednesday, Cruz lamented that Bello was trying to “score brownie points” at his expense without showing evidence or confronting him first.
“What the secretary did is unfair and unjust, especially for an ordinary worker like me who has toiled for years in government service without a black mark,” he said. “In just 5 minutes on TV, and without showing proof, he zapped what little reputation I have patiently built in the 32 years that I have worked in government.”
Cruz said he could not understand why Bello did that when the secretary knows he and other welfare officers are doing their assigned tasks. “The secretary was here earlier this month (August) and he saw us working overtime to serve the distressed Saudi Oger workers. If he has received complaints, why didn’t he confront me about it?” he wondered.
What provoked Bello during the TV interview was a complaint by a group of workers in Jeddah who said their company was also in dire straits, just like Saudi Oger and Saudi Binladin. The group’s spokesman claimed that Cruz had refused to act on their request for an allowance from the fund the Philippine government had earlier released for Filipino workers in the Kingdom whose employers have not paid them for months.
Cruz said he was among those who pushed for the Philippine government to provide allowance to the distressed workers. But he explained that he cannot just release money to workers other than those of Saudi Oger without guidelines from the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA), of which Bello is the board chairman.
“If I do that, the Commission on Audit would disallow it. Nonetheless, we have requested guidelines from the home office so that we can also cover those from companies aside from Saudi Oger,” he said.
On Bello’s announcement to remove him from Jeddah, Cruz said he and seven others from the Philippine Overseas labor Office (POLO) assigned in the Kingdom had actually asked to be sent home on July 26 in solidarity with two labor attachés who were earlier pulled out for allegedly not doing their work. A recall order was subsequently issued by Bello’s office for Cruz and the seven others, but which was to take effect in October.
“Secretary Bello forgot all about that. But I am asking him to relieve me right away of my duties after what he had said on TV,” he said, adding, “it does not seem right that the Consul General in Jeddah trusts us but our very own boss, the labor secretary, thinks we are misfits.”
(Source: ArabNews.com)