DMW logs 150 complaints from seasonal workers in South Korea

The Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) on Monday said they have received around 150 complaints from the Filipinos employed under the seasonal workers program in South Korea since 2022.

In a press briefing, DMW officer-in-charge Hans Leo Cacdac said that there were 3,353 Filipino seasonal workers in South Korea as of December 2023.

Their deployments began in 2022 under the program which allows short-term employment of foreign agricultural workers to address the chronic labor shortages during the peak planting and harvesting season in South Korea.

“Over the period of time since the deployments began in 2022, we have received a number of complaints from the workers. Around 150 or so are the registered complaints by our migrant workers office in Seoul,” Cacdac said.

“[The complaints are] exacting fees, legal deductions from wages, and cases even of involvement of brokers or intermediaries in recruitment both in Korea and here in the Philippines charging fees or exorbitant amounts of money,” he added. 

Cacdac said they also recorded five cases of physical abuse, five medical cases, and four natural deaths of Filipinos in South Korea in the span of two years. 

Following this, he said the DMW issued in January 2024 a moratorium on the deployment of seasonal workers, which arrangement is made directly between the Philippine and South Korea local government units.

To address the situation, Cacdac said the DMW is set to issue permanent guidelines for the deployment of Filipino seasonal workers which would cover their standards of protection, fair treatment, decent working hours and wages, access to justice, and the monitoring and prohibition against exorbitant fees.

“These guidelines are forthcoming. We’re slated to meet with the (Republic of Korea) Ministry of Justice soon, and we’re hoping na at the very latest to have these guidelines issued by next week,” he said.

In November 2023, the DMW, along with the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) started creating a joint circular that would contain directives and rules for seasonal worker arrangements. 

The creation of the circular was prompted by a wide variety of complaints from seasonal overseas Filipino workers in South Korea.—RF, GMA Integrated News