Mowasalat has hired 36 of the 137 Filipino bus drivers stranded in Dubai after they were reportedly duped by a recruitment agency and given bogus jobs, a report from the Philippine Department of Labour and Employment said yesterday.
Vivo Vidal, chief of the Philippine Overseas Labour Office (POLO) in Qatar, has informed Philippine Labour Secretary Marianito Roque that 36 drivers had been hired by Mowasalat, Qatar’s public transportation company, which employs some 800 Filipino workers.
A team led by Roberto Makondo, manager of Mowasalat’s Technical Training Department, went to Dubai to conduct an evaluation and see if the drivers met the company’s requirements. Sixty-one of the drivers were interviewed, after which 36 were hired.
The stranded drivers had left their jobs in the Philippines and applied with a recruitment agency that charged them P150,000 (QR 11,500) each as placement fees, only to end up with bogus jobs in Dubai.
Mowasalat’s move to hire the drivers came after Philippine officials in Qatar approached the transport company and enquired if it could offer them jobs.
Following a directive from the Philippine labour secretary, POLO officials in Dubai and Qatar have been coordinating their efforts to assist the stranded drivers and facilitate job placements for them.
Roque was earlier informed by the POLO in Dubai that more than half of the 137 drivers had been offered jobs by reputable government and private sector firms in the United Arab Emirates that employ sizeable numbers of overseas Filipino workers.
The Emirates Airways’ Emirates Flight Catering is hiring 44 of the drivers, and has offered to hire 20 more of them.
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