KUWAIT CITY, Jan 16: Head of the Union of Domestic Labor Bureaus Khalid Al-Dakhnan lamented the decision taken by the Philippines Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) to totally ban the deployment of Filipino workers to Kuwait, reports Al-Anba daily.

Speaking to the daily, Al-Dakhnan stressed that the consequences of this decision will negatively refl ect on the domestic labor recruitment sector in Kuwait and will lead to domestic labor bureaus incurring heavy losses which may reach the extent of closing down these bureaus in case the ban continues for more than two months.

He attributed the reasons behind such a quick decision to several factors topped by the death of a Filipina housemaid, and Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ delay in signing and implementing some agreements with the Philippines.

Al-Dakhnan said the union had frequently called on the concerned authorities to take an action in this regard and sign agreements with the Philippines in order to avoid such crisis. He explained that the union had appealed to the concerned authorities to open new doors and sign joint cooperation agreements with countries that export domestic workers in order to avoid relying on a single country for domestic workers. Al-Dakhnan said, “Most of the offices are not receiving many applications now because of this ban”.