The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) has clarified that household service workers, who comprise 17% of Filipino workers in Saudi Arabia, are not part or covered of the Kingdom’s decision to abolish the kafala or sponsorship system.

The decades-old labor policy mandates that the immigration status of foreign workers will be tied to their employers or sponsor.

The Saudi government has announced that it will abolish the said policy starting next year.

“Yung ating domestic workers hindi po sila covered maging ‘yung family drivers hindi po sila covered nito,” DOLE’s international labor affairs bureau director Alice Visperas said in a media briefing on Monday.

She added that only those who are skilled or workers in companies will benefit from the new labor policy.

“At least kung titignan natin, libu-libo pa rin naman ang mag benefit dito kahit hindi nga kasama ang mga household workers,” Visperas added.

The government said they will appeal to the Saudi government to reconsider its decision and include the household workers to benefit from the new policy.

The professions not covered under the initiative are private driver, home guard, domestic worker, shepherd, and gardener or farmer.

“Over the past 35 years since the Philippines started to deploy domestic workers to the Middle East countries numerous cases or almost 1-2 thousand complaints annually have been filed with the POLO offices and at the POEA involving our domestic workers and their employers,” migration expert Manny Geslani said in a statement.