Safe houses in Abu Dhabi and Dubai have become home to more than 300 Filipina women whose dreams of riches and career turned sour upon their arrival in the UAE.
Tahira Yaqoob
meets them and those working to achieve their repatriation.
Tucked away in a small alcove at the Philippine overseas labour office, dozens of battered suitcases stand to attention in neat rows. There is nothing to distinguish them from one another except the numbered tag on each handle. The contents might vary; a ragtag bundle of dresses in one, shoes and some scraps of make-up in another. But one thing unifies them: packed in among the hand-me-downs and knick-knacks are the shattered hopes and dreams of their owners.
For these few humble possessions crammed into each case, most of them donations, are all the women who own them have left to show for months and sometimes years in the UAE. Each of the women arrived in the country with her head full of stories from recruitment agencies about the riches she would earn upon arrival; of the money she would be able to send back home to family depending on them; of the plush villas they would be living in.
But for each of these Filipina women, that promise turned sour. They are the runaway housemaids, the domestic workers whose illusions about the life they would lead here have been shattered. These are the ones who have managed to escape their own personal prison, beaten regularly and abused. They are the lucky ones. For each woman who fled the home of her employer, the Philippine embassy estimates many more are being mistreated.
"I get up to 20 phone calls a day and every day there are two or three new arrivals here," sighs Mary Simangan, a welfare officer at the overseas labour office in Dubai. "If they have problems with their sponsors or employers, they run away and come to us. Most of the women here are overworked and have had few hours of rest. Sometimes they have slept only two or three hours a night. "A few have signs of physical abuse and a small number have been sexually abused. Only today, one came in from Sharjah. She was brought in by her Roman Catholic priest because she had bruises on her arms."
The places they flee to have come to be known as the "safe houses", refuges funded by the embassy in Abu Dhabi and the consulate general in Dubai. These makeshift shelters were never intended to house runaway maids. In Abu Dhabi, the Philippine embassy headquarters have been taken over and in Dubai, it is the labour office in Al Qusais. Both are villas built to accommodate a maximum of 20 people. Instead, there are about 160 women in Abu Dhabi and more than 140 in Dubai. At its peak, there were 250 women living in the Abu Dhabi safe house.
By day, the buildings are working offices and the women tiptoe around upstairs, only emerging for meals. By night, they fill the floors of each villa with the hubbub of their chatter and occasional laughter as they cook together and share their stories. But even when they erupt in giggles over a shared anecdote, there is one common thought that is never far from their minds. Like the suitcases that stand ready to be claimed, they are suspended in limbo, waiting for the day they can go home.
They have to wait while the embassy and consulate staff are involved in delicate and protracted negotiations to retrieve their passports from their employers and clear the paperwork with the immigration authorities. Technically, they are illegal aliens from the moment they abscond and if they set foot outside the safe house, they could be arrested for violating their visa regulations. While the safe houses do not have diplomatic immunity, immigration officials work with the Philippine embassy to get the women home.
But even when they have been given the all-clear, the women still have to find the funds for their plane ticket as their employers are no longer liable. It means most are trapped, unable to work, go home or leave the safe house until either the cost of their fare is authorised by the Philippine government in Manila, their recruitment agency agrees to pay it or a kindly donor proffers the cash. They are the invisible women of the UAE; most who pass by the gates locked at night would not even be aware of their existence.
Rovelyn Losbanez, 32, arrived yesterday with only the clothes she was wearing. Incongruously dressed in a pinafore, she nervously twists a tissue in hands so calloused, they could belong to someone twice her age. "I have been here for five years. I wanted to help my family. My parents needed the money and I had to help send my brother to school to finish his studies," she says. "The job here was very hard. I had no time to myself and my boss was very strict in everything. I had to do everything exactly as she wanted.
"When I made mistakes, she would slap and kick me or call me a prostitute. I just wanted her to stop, so I said I would jump from the window to kill myself. "She made me sit and write down on a piece of paper that if I did so, she would not be responsible and then I had to sign it. I only wanted to jump so there would be no more problems, but she said God would not accept me. "Finally when she said: 'You will die at my hands,' I decided to run. I stayed all that time because I kept thinking things would get better but I was worried she would carry out her threat.
"I feel safe here and I know the office will protect me. I am sure they can take me from this place." She worked for up to 19 hours a day with no day off for Dh1,000 a month and says she often felt "dizzy and sleepy" from a lack of rest. Simangan says her salary is relatively generous compared to most: "Recruitment agencies in the Philippines promise they will receive Dh1,500 a month but when they arrive, their contracts are changed. Some get as little as Dh500 a month for working 12 hours a day."
Because domestic helpers are not protected by labour laws (they instead fall under the jurisdiction of the naturalisation and residency department - DRND - within the Ministry of Interior), there is little legal recourse when things go wrong. The ministry recognised the problem and three years ago, introduced a new contract governing basic holidays and medical care, with an arbitration court to settle disputes between workers and their employers. It stipulated a minimum wage recommended by the Philippine government of Dh1,469 a month (US$400).
Crucially though, Mohammed al Merri, the director of DRND, said at the time: "A worker's legal rights will be disregarded if he or she absconds." Grace Princesa, the Philippine ambassador to the UAE, says a key problem is contract substitution. Housemaids are often signed up by recruitment agencies in the Philippines, who promise them a Dh1,4469 salary and get the contract approved by the labour office.
When the women arrive in the country, they are asked to sign a new contract for just half that amount by agencies here. The women - poor, sometimes illiterate, unaware of their rights and indebted to the agencies to the tune of thousands of dirhams for bringing them in the first place - unwittingly sign themselves over. "Some of the recruiters go to the provinces and rural areas and tell their parents if they allow their daughter to work, the salary will be big," says Simangan. "Some think they are coming to work as saleswomen. They arrive on a visit visa and the employment visa waiting at the airport instead says 'servant'."
"If a domestic worker has problems with her employer, she has to go to the immigration department or the police," says Benito Valeriano, the Philippine consul general. "If it is a salary or work-related issue, it should come under the labour ministry but there is no mechanism that will protect them. Without the permission of the employer, she cannot leave. We have brought this to the attention [of the authorities]. We are working very hard with the immigration department and the police and they have been very accommodating. There is a great effort to help and that is why we are able to send the women home expeditiously. Most of these women are not domestic workers. They come here to seek employment and adventure. They are in the safe houses because they find themselves in trouble.
"They end up there because either their contracts have been violated by agencies in the Philippines or they come in on a visit visa, meet an employer once they are here and then convert their visa. Some end up with physically or sexually abusive employers. Others are overworked or not given time to rest. Sometimes it is just a case of misunderstanding and they return to their employer after the matter is settled amicably but those cases are minimal, perhaps one in 100.
"Our job is to inform the employer and immigration that this person is in our care and then they are protected. We go through the legal process to find out her liabilities. "She might need to pay a fine or reimburse her agency so we talk to them about cutting the contract. The objective is to have her repatriated. Sometimes that can take months if the employer accuses her of stealing, as she has to wait for the criminal case to be concluded.
"We are concerned about those who are being misled into coming here. Often they don't tell their families about their experience when they go home, either through shame or stigma, and the pattern continues. It is very hard to talk about your failure. Some use it as motivation to improve their skills when they return but others simply go back to the farms." Of the 300,000 Filipinos based in the UAE, an estimated 35,000 work as housemaids. The average salary, at between Dh700 and Dh800 a month, is half what it should be.
"They only find out when they get here," says Valeriano. "Our mandate here is to make sure the welfare of our workers is protected, that they have adequate representation with the host authorities and that those who require assistance receive it. Given the size of my office and the community, that is a tall order." Simangan says the biggest problem among the women is depression: "Most of the women here just want to go home. They are often traumatised. Some are mentally disturbed because of the lack of food in their employment. They eat very little and work long hours. The workers who are still in employment call to offload their problems. Sometimes I am a counsellor, sometimes I am a friend, sometimes a mother or a sister."
It is a Monday night and Simangan looks exhausted. At 9pm, she should have left work four hours earlier but because of the volume of cases and the new arrivals turning up daily, she is often still there at 1am. Today there is a particular reason for staying late at the Dubai safe house: after six months there, Rosemarie Leano, a 38-year-old mother of six, has been given the go-ahead to return to the Philippines, where her 10-year-old son is being treated for leukaemia.
There is a frenzy of activity as her exit papers are prepared. Leano's disappearance will leave a gaping hole in the running of the safe house. Leano is one of the main cooks and has helped organise the women into 11 groups of seven, who take it in turns every week to prepare traditional Filipino curries on two outdoor stoves, using enormous steel saucepans better equipped to cater for weddings. It is a formidable task: they get through seven 110kg sacks of rice a week.
While the embassy provides meals, the safe houses are dependent on charitable donations and today, the generously-sized kitchen is crammed with dozens of crates of eggs from a kindly farmer in Fujairah. Marialyn Vinluan, a Bambi-like 25-year-old with an eager smile and a propensity to dispense hugs to her housemates, scampers in, having heard the news. She arrived a year ago after her employer placed a hot iron on her leg, leaving a permanent blistering purple welt. The scars on her arms from being tied up with an electrical cord are only just starting to fade.
She throws herself at Leano and sobs in her arms. Leano weeps too as she says: "I am going home to my babies but how can I leave my babies in here? We have unity here. Of course, there is the occasional fight among the girls but all we are waiting for is to go outside. My heart tells me I need to go but there are girls who need me here too." But the wait is not over for Vinluan, who says she has never received a dirham of the Dh650-a-month wages she should have been paid over 19 months and with the help of the consulate, is fighting to get it.
"I want to go but only after I get my salary," she says. "I don't know why my employer beat me. Maybe I did something wrong. I used to wake at 4am to start work and only managed to get away one morning when I saw she had not locked the front door." Leano's space will quickly be filled. The women sleep upstairs at the overseas labour office, which a sign euphemistically describes as a "Filipino workers resource centre".
They cram three to a single bed on one of the 25 beds or 55 mattresses. Every nook and cranny is used; they even sleep on the kitchen table. During the day many of the women sleep in between mealtimes. In the evenings, they cluster around a single television screen to watch Pinoy TV. Christian missionary groups and doctors occasionally visit, but the women have been banned from singing and dancing after the landlord, who lives in the villa next door, complained about noise.
Marryjean Reganion, 20, says: "Other than eating and sleeping, there is nothing to do. Sometimes I talk to friends or watch TV but during office hours, we have to stay upstairs." They support each other, rallying those who are succumbing to depression. May, 28, a mother of two, can barely walk after falling from a wall she scaled to escape. Her bruised and swollen leg has a hairline fracture but she cannot afford medicine to relieve the pain and the consulate's costs are already stretched.
"I was treated like an animal by my employer," she says, weeping. "I came to Dubai because it was my ambition to make some money for my family but I am a failure. I will not even be able to work when I go back because of my injury." The atmosphere is considerably different in the Abu Dhabi safe house. It is so crowded that a dozen or more sleep in tents on the rooftop because there is no more room inside the villa. But an army of 30 volunteers visit several times a week to organise dance and art classes, yoga,and arrange for treatment by a doctor. They also lobby hotels and business for donations of everything from clothes to toiletries.
One volunteer, who wants to remain anonymous, says: "We do anything we can to relieve the boredom. The first time I took clothes and things for the girls, they could not grab them fast enough. "But I do not think enough is done to lobby the authorities to change the law. We are constantly giving but we need to be working harder to solve the problem. "There could also be better co-ordination between the different groups trying to help so we do not end up doubling up. I do not think the voluntary aspect is managed efficiently. When 10 girls were repatriated recently, it was the volunteers who had to raise about Dh7,000 to get the visas cancelled rather than the embassy. They would never have gone home otherwise."
Nhel Morona, a spokesman for the UAE branch of Migrante International, which oversees the rights and welfare of Filipino workers abroad, says: "The situation is massively in need of improvement. There is not enough legislation to protect domestic helpers. Our call is for domestic work to be considered as work and come under the labour ministry. "If the law was weighted in favour of domestic helpers and they were treated as human beings, they would work more productively which would be beneficial for everyone. Instead the Philippine government is sending these women home without getting any justice or challenging the employers who abuse them. We would like to see more legal cases involving their abusers."
The new Philippine president, Benigno Aquino, has promised more job opportunities and training schemes for Filipinos so they no longer need to leave the country, but such a move is expected to take time to implement. Meanwhile a Dubai-based recruitment agency was still advertising housemaids at rates below government guidelines yesterday. An employee at Al Qabas Labour Supply reeled off a list of prices: Dh800 a month for Filipina, Dh750 for an Indonesian, Dh700 for a Sri Lankan or Dh600 for an Ethiopian with no experience.
And a woman on the website expatwoman.com opined how she was taken advantage of after hiring a maid for Dh2,000 a month. "My maid salary is now Dh900," she wrote. "She has her own room and bathroom, a mobile and we provide her with anything that she needs. Yes, she doesn't get one day off per week to go out..I have just decided to be strict and hire through an agency, pay less salary and no day off so when I give her extra and let her out, she will be happy." Even if labour laws are changed in favour of housemaids, it is clear the attitudes of employers still have a long way to go.
Eva Leopoldo, 25
I applied for a nanny post last year but when I arrived, I was told my job was as a housemaid. My first employer only gave me one meal, a piece of salmon, at 4pm every day. I found another employer last November but when I asked to go home, she got angry and accused me of stealing bangles.
My mother had a stroke and my 11-year-old niece is looking after her. There is no one to care for the family. My father died when I was a baby and I have a brother and five sisters to take care of. I just want to go home but I cannot go until the court case is finished. I have a degree in safety consultancy from Southern Mindanao College in the Philippines. I came here for an experience because I was told Dubai is a very nice, open place with good people. I wanted to save money for the future.
I never thought this would happen to me. This place is not for me. I was told I would get Dh1,469 a month but I was earning Dh850 a month instead and it cost me about Dh800 in agency fees to get here. If anyone from the Philippines was thinking of coming here, I would tell them to think twice. If you come here, you lose contact your family because you are locked into your contract for two years and mobile phones are now allowed.
Marryjean Reganion, 20
I arrived in February 2009 through an agency in the Philippines, who said I would be working in a laundry for Dh1,100 a month. When I landed, it said servant on my visa and I was only paid Dh800. I worked every day without rest from 5am until 11pm. My boss beat me and shouted at me. I made so many sacrifices for many months. She said she would not pay me for making little mistakes, like forgetting to put things back, and she would pull my hair.
The mistreatment began within one month of me starting work there. At first I overlooked it and thought it was a one-off but she would regularly pull my dress, beat me and slap my back. Afterwards she would say sorry. My main concern was, how could I go back to the Philippines with no money? Plus my signed contract was for two years. I respected her as she was my madam and I was only a servant, even though she called me the Arabic word for garbage instead of my name.
I was not allowed a mobile phone or television. I was scared and thought I would talk to the embassy. My boss said you are not my family. I can break my daughter's head, I can do what I like with you. When she told me she was not going to pay me for a month because my work was not good, I left. It felt good not to be in the house with her. Only when I ran away did I find out my six-year-old daughter had been in hospital with a severe fever.
My husband was trying to call me for three months but she shouted at him: 'You give me money to send her back to the Philippines.' She even shouted at my mother. I feel upset that I could have made more money by staying in the Philippines and now I do not have the money for a ticket home. This is only my experience. Not all Filipinos here are maltreated. Maybe it happened to me because I am a survivor. People who have a lot of money feel they can do what they want. I have promised myself I will not come back.
Diana Sibal, 28
I finished studying as a medical technician in the Philippines and signed a contract for Dh1,200 a month. I was told I was going to work as a pharmacist but when I left my town of Tugerao, which is 12 hours from Manila, and arrived at Dubai International Airport, the stamp in my visa said I would be working as a housemaid.
I had to pay more than Dh2,000 in agency fees, medical tests and expenses so I had to work. My family is poor and I have a five-year-old daughter back home. There were three housemaids altogether and we had to buy our own food and clothes. The female driver was expecting a salary of Dh1,500 a month but was paid Dh500. I stayed for seven months to pay off my fee but they still owe me one month's salary. I did everything, from the gardening and cleaning to construction in the middle of a hot day.
One day I had to paint a room. I started at 10am and finished at 1am the next day, then was up at 4am to tutor the children. My boss tried to hit me and threw my clothes away when I left. She blamed me for the children not doing well in school. I ran away because I could not stop crying the whole night - I just could not do the job any more. I walked through the back yard and kept running until I reached a taxi.
It took my employer three months to return my passport I will go home and apply to come back but I will not work as a housemaid again. Dubai is very nice but you cannot predict your destiny. Maybe this was my fate. I am just lucky they did not hurt me more. When I look around, I see a girl whose hair was cut off, another who came here with a broken nose, another who was not paid for three years. We are all victims of maltreatment but not all people have the same experience. I have a lot of dreams and that is why I am here.
I want to apply to become cabin crew for Emirates. I am humble but that does not stop me from having my goals. I have been inspiring the other girls and joke and laugh with them when they are depressed. I stay strong because of my dreams. You have to have strong will and determination to survive.