Filipino Worker Recounts Escape From Iraq

[babylonsister]

http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/3180/Filipino_Worker_Recounts_Escape_From_Iraq

Filipino Worker Recounts Escape From Iraq
Desperate Man Helped 40 Others Flee Involuntary Servitude for Contractor
By CHRISTINA DAVIDSON Posted 0 hr. 23 min. ago


The promise to build a better life in the Philippines for himself and his young family took Ramil Autencio to Kuwait. He never suspected that a month after leaving home in December 2003 he would be living a wartime nightmare in northern Iraq, pushing boulders 11-hours a day, seven days a week for a contractor fortifying a US military camp in Tikrit.

Showers to wash off the day’s sweat were an uncertainty, and in the chilly January and February nights of 2004, he and seven other Filipinos would live in an empty truck with no windows, sleep on cardboard boxes for a bed, and eat leftovers and meals-ready-to-eat from soldiers. It was the only way to have enough food. He says crackling gunfire and crashing incoming mortar would wake him at all hours of the night and the unfortified trailer would tremble and shake from nearby rocket blasts.

It was not what he had planned at all.

Trained as an air conditioning repairman and technician, Autencio says his recruiter in the Philippines agreed to place him in a two-year job at the Crown Plaza Hotel in Kuwait for $450 a month -- maybe more with overtime. But when he arrived at the Kuwait airport, he was quickly shuttled to a rundown apartment building managed by First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, a Kuwaiti firm doing a booming multimillion-dollar business with the US military and the Pentagon’s primary support contractor KBR. To date, the company has billed the US government perhaps $2 billion for work in Iraq, including the $592-million US embassy in Baghdad now nearing completion.

There were no more jobs at the hotel, Autencio was informed, and because the job recruiter had only processed him for a one-month travel visa, he could not work in Kuwait. Autencio said First Kuwaiti offered him one of three options: pay a $1,000 penalty and work in Kuwait for free for six months, be arrested and jailed, or work in Iraq. As he weighed these choices, he would live in an apartment building with 800 other Filipinos where there were no mattresses or blankets. They ate only chicken and rice under the building’s crumbling ceilings.

“A jail would be better,” Autencio recalled. “We were ordered to go.... They forcibly brought us to Iraq.”

more...

[ck4829]

1. K&R

[Bobbieo]

2. Contractors Working For the U.S. military are a major

force in the human trafficking problem with people from 3rd world nations. Disgustng!!!!

[babylonsister]

3. And notice the resounding silence from this admin; disgusting is right. nt

[Ganja Ninja]

4. Why is it that you can't get the average right winger in this country

to pay attention to stories like this? Why can't they connect the dots? Do exploited 3rd world laborers and little or no progress in Iraq reconstruction equal the billions in reconstruction funds that have been spent? When are people going to do the math?

[CrispyQ]

5. Oh you big silly!

It's the liberal media, don't ya know. They won't show the Iraqi success stories & there are hundreds.

My rw mother actually believes that. :eyes:

[ellisonz]

6. Shame...

First Kuwaiti’s general manager, Wadih Al-Absi consistently denies that his company would ever endorse such recruitment practices. During numerous conversations, he has said that First Kuwaiti never pressured workers into Iraq or violated international visa requirements. During one meeting in Washington, DC, in September 2005, he said that people were envious of his company’s success. “People will never criticize someone who fails,” he said.

Al-Absi also flatly accused Autencio of lying. His proof is a working agreement, purportedly signed by Autencio before leaving the Philippines. Although Al-Absi admitted that unscrupulous recruitment agencies do sometimes misrepresent jobs and take money from people eager to work, he provided Autencio’s undated contract with First Kuwaiti that identified the job site as both Kuwait and “mainly” Iraq.

The agreement also lays out salary: $346 a month for 8-hour days, seven days a week, plus $104 a month for a mandatory 2 hours overtime every day.

Because of allegations of labor trafficking and other abuses, First Kuwaiti is now under investigation by the US Justice Department, precipitated by American employees reporting that workers transiting Kuwait were handed boarding passes for Dubai before landing in Baghdad.

Oh capitalism.:mad:

[Pooka Fey]

7. K&R