GENERAL SANTOS CITY — City officials urged the government on Thursday to investigate the death of an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) from this city in Saudi Arabia last month.
City Councilor Lourdes Casabuena, chair of the city council’s committee on labor and overseas employment, asked concerned agencies under the Department of Labor and Employment to look into the circumstances that led to the death of OFW Veronica Benarao.
Benarao, who hails from Barangay Fatima here, reportedly died of cardiac arrest at a hospital in Riyadh last March 11.
The 41-year-old household service worker, whose remains arrived at their house in Purok 11-B on Wednesday, had been previously declared as “brain dead” after fainting and falling off a stair at the house of her employer on Feb. 24.
Casabuena said Benarao should returned home last December as her employment contract already expired.
But she said the OFW was forced to verbally agree with her employer to continue working as her replacement had not yet arrived.
The official said Benerao was not able to report her status to the Philippine embassy and her extension was not properly documented.
She said the employer did not pay any salary to Benarao until the supposed accident last Feb. 24.
Casabuena said the late OFW’s still unidentified employment agency should also be investigated in line with her plight.
“We should file a case against the agency because her contract already ended last December,” she said in an interview over TV Patrol Soccsksargen.
Benarao’s husband Lino said they will seek for an autopsy on her remains to verify the cause of her death.
Although her medical report noted that she died of cardiac arrest and had been supposedly diagnosed with hypertension, he said they still have doubts with the circumstances of her death.
“Her last call to us was last January. She told us then that she had no replacement yet and concerned with her situation,” he said.
The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration facilitated the return of Benarao’s remains and provided initial assistance to her family.
The agency committed to provide livelihood assistance to the family and process the inclusion of the late OFW’s children into its scholarship program.(PNA)
