The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) is set to review the verification guidelines of the Philippine Overseas Labor and Office (POLO) following the suspension of the deployment of household service workers (HSW) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

During the ''Laging Handa'' virtual public briefing, POEA chief Bernard Olalia said the suspension for deployment in Saudi Arabia will only affect newly-hired or those who are applying as domestic helpers in KSA.

"It means if an agency will process to verify a new hire . Of those who are still applying, they cannot process it right now because POLO was ordered to suspend its verification. We will wait to have new verification guidelines from POEA," he said.

"We, in the POEA, will convene the technical working group, we will discuss this and we will determine the important details that we should include in the verification guidelines," he added.

Olalia assures that POEA will speed up creation of the new verification guidelines to avoid the abuse against the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) in Saudi Arabia.

Last week, Olalia said they expect thousands to be adversely affected by the temporary suspension of the verification of newly-hired HSWs bound for Saudi Arabia.

"Our deployment to KSA is by the thousands, especially if we talk of the number of monthly deployment," said Olalia.

"With this, many of our HSWs won't be hired if they don't undergo contract verification," he added.

He explained that the temporary deployment suspension of domestic workers to Saudi Arabia was ordered by Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III last week following the reported abuses against OFWs.

Olalia said the review of the verification guidelines will be done because there are cases that the OFW's were being transferred to the blacklisted employers when they arrived in KSA.

"If you could remember there was an abuse against our OFWs particularly the HSWs assigned to an employer in Saudi Arabia. What happens is the employment contract does not include the complete address and complete name. So what happens is they are being transferred to a blacklisted employer," he said.

"It means, they circumvent our verification rules and we see the gap. That is why we have to plug and change these verification guidelines so that the abuse will not happen again," he added. Robina Asido/DMS