Filipino migrant workers are being smuggled to Lebanon with the help of corrupt immigration officials in Manila who work alongside illegal employment syndicates, senior politicians in the Philippines have warned. The Philippines banned its workers from coming to Lebanon during the 2006 summer war with Israel and has kept the rule in place because of the poor conditions faced by migrant workers in the country.
Despite the ban, Filipinos make up the third-largest migrant worker community in Lebanon. Around 25,000 are thought to be working in the country and more could be coming, circumventing security at the airport in Manila to take up jobs provided by employment agencies.
The Philippine ambassador to Lebanon, Gilbert Asuque Jr. said in a radio interview that the ban was in place for good reason. "Lebanon does not have a law that protects the rights of migrant workers," he said. "Even though they are aware of the situation and we are working with them to improve it, consultations are still under way."
Asuque said many Filipinos were ignoring the risks of travelling to Lebanon to find employment as migrant workers.
"Many Filipinos are ignoring the ban and still coming here to work as domestic helpers," he said.
Filipino vice President Noli de Castro said that his government had discovered seven migrants bound for Lebanon on Friday morning and raised concerns that immigration officers at the airport were helping the workers get to Lebanon despite it being against the law to do so.
He warned that migrants should not try to bypass the law, calling for them to "go through one immigration lane."
But the Filipino government has accepted that tensions in Lebanon have reduced greatly since 2006, when the ban was implemented, and is set to relax laws for Filipino workers already employed in Lebanon.
For the first time, migrant workers living here will be able to visit the Philippines without running the risk of being prevented from returning to work in Lebanon.
The Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) said it had made the exception because it received many requests from Filipinos working in Lebanon to be allowed to return home to visit their families at Christmas.
The agency's administrator, Jennifer Manalili, said: "The PEOA governing board will soon be coming out with a resolution that would allow our workers in Lebanon to spend Christmas here without fear of getting banned from returning to their jobs."
The Phillipines also bans workers from travelling to Afghanistan, Iraq and Nigeria in search of employment, but the agency said that it was unlikely the same concessions would be made for Filipinos working in these countries.
There are an estimated 200,000 migrant domestic workers living in Lebanon. They have no legal status in the country, a fact which NGOs and civil society organisations say leaves them open to be exploited and abused by their employers.
Almost 10% of migrant workers in Lebanon have reported being physically or sexually abused by their employers and others say that their wages have been withheld.
