The Labor Ministry will approach the Foreign Affairs Ministry to sort out obstacles in recruiting Filipino domestic workers including contractual difficulties faced by Saudi recruiters in the Philippines.
Labor Ministries of the two countries had signed an agreement earlier this year to resume recruitment of the Filipino domestic workers.
Mufrej Al-Haqbani, undersecretary at the ministry, expected his foreign affairs counterpart to help resolve some of the issues.
“A meeting would be held with representatives from recruiting offices in the Kingdom in the next few days. We will listen to the problems faced by these offices and then work with the Foreign Ministry to solve them,” he said.
The main issues at the meeting would include the difficulties faced by Saudi recruiters in Manila, according to a source. Philippine recruitment offices are allowed to deal with five Saudi offices at one time, while their Saudi counterparts can only deal with one office in Manila, it said.
Earlier, the Philippine Labor Ministry stopped more than 120 Saudi recruitment offices from dealing with their Philippine counterparts without considering signed contracts between the two sides. The Saudi offices had paid more than 50 percent of the value of the contracts, which was lost as a result of the ministry’s intervention, the source said.