MANILA - Filipinos are taking up work at
US-run facilities in Iraq, dodging an official
Philippines travel and employment ban on the
war-torn country and providing the US military and
its affiliated contractors the cheap,
English-speaking manpower it is having increasing
difficulty recruiting at home.
The
deployments to Iraq represent an illicit spin on
the Philippines' global outsourcing phenomenon,
where more than 8 million Filipinos have left home
for higher paying jobs abroad. The Philippine
government imposed a ban on the deployment of
overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to Iraq in July
2004, soon after Manila recalled its small
humanitarian contingent after militant captors
threatened to behead a Filipino truck driver
working for the
US occupation forces.
The Philippines remains a staunch
supporter of US-led counterterrorism operations in
Southeast Asia, including cooperation in combating
alleged Islamic terror groups in the southern
Philippines. Critics contend that the hotly
contested 2004 election had abruptly influenced
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's government
decision to withdraw from the US-led "coalition of
the willing" occupation forces in Iraq. Two months
before the ban was announced, another Filipino
truck driver was the Philippines' first casualty
in Iraq, which unleashed a torrent of
anti-American protests in Manila.
More
recently, however, the Philippine government has
demonstrated a waning verve in enforcing that ban.
Two years later, an estimated 3,000 out of the
total 7,000 Filipinos now serving at four US
military-run camps in Iraq are undocumented
workers, according to Philippine labor officials.
Comparatively high wages have been a push factor:
Filipinos in Iraq earn monthly salaries from the
US military and its affiliated business interests
ranging between US$600 to $1,000 excluding special
allowances, according to the labor official.
Filipinos already were a massive presence
in the Middle East, and have historically shown
extraordinary staying power in the region when
faced with violent conflict. When the first Gulf
War erupted between Iraq and the US in 1991, there
were nearly 100,000 OFWs working in a wide array
of jobs in Kuwait. When Iraqi forces first invaded
the oil-rich sultanate in 1990, despite offers of
free repatriation by the Philippine government,
only a few of the workers took up the offer to
leave their jobs and fly home.
Philippine
labor officials estimate that there are currently
about 1.5 million OFWs in the Middle East - many
of whom are willing to work amid grave security
risks rather than face the dismal labor market
back home. An estimated 11% of the Philippine's
in-country labor force is currently unemployed,
and that rate is steadily rising due to an
explosive population growth rate. Last year an
estimated 8 million OFWs pumped nearly $12 billion
of remittances into the Philippine economy.
The comparatively high wages on offer in
Iraq has made it an attractive growth market for
Middle East-based OFWs, Philippine labor officials
say. Despite the "not valid for travel to Iraq"
advisory stamped into every Philippine passport,
thousands of Filipinos are openly defying the ban
and government officials are either hard-pressed
or unwilling to find a solution to the subversion
of the ban. US looks the other
way Philippine-based labor groups contend
that the US and Philippine governments are
covertly using OFWs to advance American interests
in Iraq. While Philippine labor officials openly
admit that many OFWs stole into Iraq after the ban
was imposed and now work openly at US-run military
facilities, they do not have hard evidence to
confirm that US government or wayward Philippine
officials are behind the illegal deployment of
workers.
The US Embassy in Manila declined
to comment on the allegations. A Philippine labor
official wouldn't address the specific
allegations, but admitted that US "employers" in
Iraq still "favor" Filipinos because of their
English-speaking abilities and long experience in
the region. Former Philippine Labor Secretary
Patricia Sto Tomas said many Filipinos evade
immigration authorities by using secret passage
points in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates,
Kuwait and Jordan. The Philippine government has a
standing agreement with all of these countries to
block OFWs from traveling or crossing into Iraq.
In December, 88 Filipinos were stranded in
Dubai after immigration officials there stopped
them from boarding a flight to Iraq. It was
apparently the first time that OFWs were prevented
from illegally entering into Iraq. But Rosalinda
Baldoz, chief of the Philippine Overseas
Employment Administration (POEA), said officials
in these countries usually look the other way when
Filipinos pass through proper immigration
channels. "They don't really care if you have a
stamp in your passport that says you're not
allowed to enter Iraq," she said.
Jason
Cruz, a 40-year-old warehouseman, and Ernie de
Leon (not their real names), a 23-year-old
lifeguard, told Asia Times Online that they were
able to enter Iraq illegally through Dubai. Cruz
said he flew to Dubai on a visit visa and then
later applied for work through United Arab
Emirates-based Prime Projects International (PPI),
a subcontractor of US military contractor
Halliburton, which provides support services to US
armed forces in Iraq.
Communicating by
e-mail, both men said they traveled to Iraq from
Dubai without any hitches and suggested that this
is was at least partly due to their employer's
known connection to the US military. "What I know
is that PPI is a subcontractor of Halliburton/KBR,
so there was no problem for us to come here even
if there is a ban stamped on our passports," Cruz
wrote in an e-mail.
According to
www.icasualties.org, an independent organization
that monitors conflict-related deaths in Iraq, a
number of Filipinos have been killed in Iraq since
the 2004 ban was imposed. Rey Torres, a driver and
security guard with Qatar International Trading
Company, was shot and killed outside Baghdad on
April 18, 2005. Ponciano Loque and Benjie Carreon
were killed on November 11 in a roadside bomb in
eastern Baghdad. The organization listed their
profession and employer as "unknown". The
following week, on November 18, Alexander Mesa
Ilocto was killed in a road accident between Iraq
and Kuwait. His position and employer were
likewise listed as "unknown".
Recent
reports have revealed that a syndicate operating
through the Philippines' Department of Foreign
Affairs was selling "clean" passports for P5,000
to P25,000 ($100 to $500) to OFWs, with the rate
scale depending on how fast the applicant desired
to leave the Philippines. However, the tide of
OFWs flowing into Iraq has recently kicked up a
legal fuss back in the Philippines.
Mark
Villacruzes, who has previously claimed to
represent US contractor Triple Canopy, a private
security and special operations firm founded in
2003 by former US Delta Forces, allegedly
recruited former members of the Philippine armed
forces after the ban was imposed to work as
security personnel for American officials and
facilities in Iraq.
Villacruzes, who is
now out on bail on charges of illegal recruitment,
is alleged to have employed about 300 former
Philippine soldiers for Triple Canopy's operations
in Iraq since the Philippine government ban was
first imposed in 2004. Most of the recruits came
from the Subic Naval Base, a former American
facility in the Philippines.
Before the
ban, Villacruzes ran a brisk recruiting business
through Armstrong Resources Corporation, a
licensed recruitment firm based in east Manila. In
March 2003, he allegedly recruited 21 former
Philippine soldiers to work for Triple Canopy in
Iraq. That batch of recruits was reportedly
offered six-month contracts on a US$1,000 per
month salary, US$150 in special allowances and
free accommodation basis. While attractive by
Philippines' standards, the wages and benefits are
considerably less then US national recruits
receive.
Last month, Villacruzes was
charged with illegal recruitment and breach of
contract for failing to pay war compensation
payments, which amounted to $9,000 for each of the
21 returnees, who sued him through the POEA. The
case has since reached the justice department.
They have also asked POEA to put Armstrong
Resources Corporation under preventive suspension
and bar Triple Canopy from participating in
Philippines overseas employment programs.
Significantly, Philippine officials have
so far been reluctant to make accusations or
pursue charges against the US firms that appear to
have played a key role in the illegal recruitment
of OFWs to staff their operations in Iraq. That
inaction might be explained by previous close
government-to-government cooperation in awarding
Filipinos work in strategically sensitive business
related to the US-led global "war on terror"
campaign.
In March 2002, local recruitment
firm Anglo-European Services, which is known to
have ties with Kellogg Brown & Root, a
division of the Halliburton Company that has won
massive troop support contracts in Iraq, sent 250
Filipino construction workers to build additional
detention cells for US-held terror suspects at
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
The recruitment
was kept under wraps by both the US and Philippine
governments, which apparently agreed that all
worker travel documents and recruitment
requirements would be expedited in just a few
hours by US embassy officials. According to people
familiar with the situation, the Guantanamo-bound
Filipino workers were allegedly slipped out of the
Ninoy Aquino International Airport without passing
through standard immigration procedures and left
Manila onboard a chartered flight to Cuba.
Anglo-European Services is now
aggressively querying the Philippine government to
clarify if the ban on travel and employment in
Iraq is still in effect, due to reports that large
number of OFWs who continue to pour into the
war-torn country. The recruitment company says it
has a big job order on hold for Filipino workers
in Iraq due to the official but lightly enforced
ban.
Cher S Jimenez is a
Manila-based journalist with the BusinessMirror
newspaper. She recently received a grant from the
Ateneo de Manila University to conduct
investigative journalism on illegal workers in the
United Arab Emirates.
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