The Filipino community in Dubai have rallied behind 137 Pinoy bus drivers who have been stranded in Dubai after they were duped by a recrutiment agency in Manila, a workers' support center in Manila said on Wednesday. Desperate for food and cash, the stranded drivers have resorted to scavenging from a dumpsite for leftover food and anything they can sell, the Blas F. Ople Policy Center, which is named after the late labor secretary Blas. F. Ople. The “bayanihan” spirit was alive in Dubai, it said, as Filipinos pitch in canned goods, water, toiletries, and other food items to help the stranded Filipino bus drivers who are looking for jobs. Drvier Claro Oliver of Rizal province contacted the Blas F. Ople Policy Center on Tuesday and complained against the CYM International Services, which recruited them. He said the agency promised them good-paying jobs at Dubai's government transport agency, the Roads and Transport Authority (RTA), but it turned out the RTA did not hire them. Former labor undersecretary Susan Ople, daughter of the late labor secretary who now head the Blas F. Ople Center, urged the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) in Manila to suspend the agency and blacklist its counterpart in Dubai, the Al-Toomoh Technical Services. The bus drivers, nearly half of whom came Ople's homeprovince of Bulacan, complained to the Center that their passports were being held by the Al-Toomoh Technical Services in Dubai, thus preventing them from looking for new jobs. Majority of the victims are professional drivers who have worked for years in reputable transport companies such as Baliuag Transit, Susan Ople said. She has asked the Philippine Consulate in Dubai to intervene and the stranded drivers' passports so they could look for new jobs. The plight of the 137 bus drivers was first exposed by Filipino journalists Jay Hilotin, who works with Gulf New, and Ares Gutierrez of Xpress publications. The Filipino community immediately came to the rescue. Hundreds of Filipinos in Dubai assembled in one place and drove in a convoy to the camp where the stranded drivers were staying, the Ople center said. The drivers said each of them paid P150,000 to CYM International Services after they were promised jobs at the RTA. Some of the drivers have been in Dubai waiting for employment since January, the Ople center said. They sought the help of the Philippine consulate so that they can look for new jobs to enable them to pay a lending agency which loaned them money. “Their biggest worry is how they can repay the lending agency. If they come home, whatever they earn as bus drivers won't be enough to pay off their loans and still sustain the needs of their families,” Susan Ople said.
