The government should give maids in the country the same protection and welfare it is giving to those working overseas, an advocacy group said Sunday. The Visayan Forum Foundation Inc. (VFI) said it is ironic that the government peddle Filipino maids to the Middle East and Asia, while ignoring their plight at home. “How can you negotiate for maids abroad while here you don't even mind them?” VFI director Cecilia Flores-Oebanda told GMANews.TV at the 2nd National Domestic Workers Summit in Quezon City. Oebando said it's time for members of Congress to wake up and act fast because they have been sleeping on the proposed Magna Carta for Domestic Workers. The two-day summit, which began Thursday, aims to draft a recommendation from various labor sectors for the International Labor Organization's (ILO) convention on domestic workers in 2010. Should the government ratify the convention, it would be compelled to pass a law protecting domestic workers, Oebanda said. She said the government ensures that Filipino household service workers overseas enjoy a minimum salary of $400 (roughly P20,000), while local maids could only ask for P800 per month under the existing Labor Code. This is being enforced by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), which requires foreign employers and placement agencies to ensure that domestic helpers hired in the country are given the minimum pay and ample protection. She added that while Filipino household service workers could maintain their edge abroad by acquiring new skills under the government's “supermaids” program, local maids hand down their jobs to their children. “It creates an inescapable cycle. It's as if they have no choice,” Oebanda said. With a magna carta, Oebanda said domestic work would be reclassified and maids could demand for better working conditions, pay scale and skills training. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has vouched her support in the passage of the bill and the adoption of the ILO convention. “You should continue to push your campaign,” Arroyo said in a written message for the summit, “You have my full support.” Such legislation would provide Cherry (not her real name), a 15-year-old maid from Bacolod city who attended the summit, a better future. “I want to be a lawyer. But I'd take on any job for now just to keep our family afloa,” she said. According to Cherry, her younger brother Jeje and elder sister Faye are also working for some families in Negros Occidental province.
