MANILA — Prospective workers should carefully scrutinize private job offers in Libya, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) warned on Friday, as it noted existing employment ban in the state.
“All workers who wish to be employed in Libya should follow government regulations and pass through the POEA (Philippine Overseas Employment Administration),” the DFA said in a statement Friday.
“Under the present Alert Level 2, for the safety of all parties, the deployment of new workers to Libya is still not possible,” it added.
Early this month, the Libyan Embassy in Manila asked the DFA to reevaluate its assessment given last September 2016, which downgraded Alert Level 4 in Libya to Alert Level 2.
Citing the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli, the DFA said overseas Filipino workers in Libya face two natural difficulties: their safety and security and their ability to send their earnings back to the Philippines.
“Based on actual feedback from the few remaining Filipino workers in Libya, the required infrastructure and mechanisms for remitting their hard-earned salaries are still in the offing,” it said.
“Foreign currency is scarce in Libya, and in the competition for this scarce resource, foreign workers lose out to uncontrollable economic and political forces.”
From its end, the DFA said it “has been constantly monitoring the situation in Libya for the welfare and benefit of prospective Filipino workers in Libya.” Such offers for employment “circumvent” the safety features set up by the Philippines through so-called backdoor deployment schemes, it said.
Under these schemes, workers are usually advid to travel first as tourists to other Asian cities to secure their Libyan working visas there.
“This is illegal recruitment, which is frowned upon by the Libyan government,” the DFA warned.