“I hope that’s not their intention,” said Irene N. Tantiado, United Workers Movement, NMI president.
She said it is uncertain whether guest workers can benefit from the adjudication and closure of 4,968 cases, as reported by Deputy Labor Secretary Cinta M. Kaipat.
“I even doubt if the employers are still on island,” Tantiado added.
Kaipat said Labor started the project in Oct. 2006 and finished it at the end of Sept. 2008.
The project covered labor cases involving unpaid wages or overtime as well as agency cases that Labor brought against employers over company-wide practices, Kaipat said.
Tantiado wants to know why Labor waited for 10 years and allowed the accumulation of cases before deciding to “clean up.”
Labor should have realized that it needed manpower when the number of cases started to increase, she said.
She also questioned the sincerity Labor which recently asked guest workers with administrative orders to file their case in small claims court.
According to Tantiado, Labor’s accomplishment is “short-sighted” and intended “to save face.”.
Kaipat said Labor has nine remaining cases from 2007 but they have already been scheduled for hearings and are expected to be completed by the end of November.
Labor said it has six opinions remaining to be issued from cases filed in 2007 and prior years that have already been heard.
“We expect to have all these opinions issued by the end of October,” Kaipat said. “We are almost completely current, dealing now only with mostly 2008 cases. The processing of the 2008 cases is going very well.”
