(Eagle News) — The Palace on Tuesday, Jan. 28, welcomed the filing of murder charges against the Kuwaiti employers of slain Overseas Filipino Worker Jeanelyn Villavende, but noted that the temporary ban on the deployment of OFWs to the Middle Eastern country stays.
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo issued the statement hours after Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III informed a Senate labor committee hearing on the maltreatment of Filipino workers abroad that Villavende’s employers had been charged over her death.
Villavende was killed in December 2019, only five months after she left the Philippines to work in Kuwait.
An autopsy conducted by the National Bureau of Investigation found she had been sexually abused, prompting the government to impose a total ban on the deployment of OFWs there.
Bello said the employers were detained in a facility for high-level criminals.
Earlier, the Philippine government imposed a total ban on the deployment of OFWs to Kuwait following the death of OFW Joanna Demafelis in 2018.
But this was lifted months later after the Philippines and Kuwait signed a pact for the protection of OFWs in the Middle Eastern country.
