Bajas accused of forced labor

July 16, 2008  --  Got something to say?
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NEW YORK - Former Philippine Ambassador to the United Nations Lauro Baja, Jr. has been accused by a Filipino woman of enslaving her for three months in the ambassador’s townhouse in the Upper East Side, forcing her to work as a servant and subjecting her to abuse.
In Manila, Baja denied the charges. But the Department of Foreign Affairs expressed concern over the charges because the Philippines is against human trafficking and forced labor. Congress is also holding a hearing on the case.
The woman, Marichu Suarez Baoanan, 39, said the diplomat and his wife Norma lured her to the United States with the promise that they would help her find work as a nurse. She said she was forced to pay them $5,000 for a visa, airfare and help in finding nursing work in New York.
But on her arrival in January 2006, Ms. Baoanan alleges, the Bajas said
that she owed them another $5,000 and would have to work in their home
to pay off the debt.
Ms. Baoanan said the Bajas confiscated her passport, forced her to work more than 120 hours per week, prevented her from leaving the house alone and paid her only $100 per month. She was the only domestic employee in a four-story house, she said at a news conference July 9 to publicize the civil lawsuit that she filed against the Bajas late last month in the United States District Court in New York.
“They paid me with curses, insults, disrespect,” Ms. Baoanan said,
choking back tears. “They didn’t treat me like a person.” She said that after three months, she fled the townhouse with the help of a “good Samaritan.”
Baja’s lawyer, Salvador Tuy, accused Ms. Baoanan of using the case to secure a visa that would allow her to remain in the United States. He said Baoanan was going to this expense in order to get a visa.
Under current US law, a person who is a victim of violence, slavery or abuse may be allowed to remain in the US.
He told the New York Times that a contract, filed with both the Filipino and American governments in Manila, states that the Bajas were employing Ms. Baoanan
as a domestic worker in their household and that she would be paid $1,000 a
month. He said all but $100 of which was sent to her family in the Philippines.
Ms. Baoanan’s lawyers admitted that after she fled the townhouse of the Bajas, she received a so-called T visa, given to victims of human trafficking, and her husband and three children have also received temporary American visas and have been reunited with her in New York.
Ms. Baoanan, who graduated with a nursing degree from a
school in the Philippines, will be able to apply for a green card when
her visa expires in four years, her lawyers said.
She said it took her two years to file the lawsuit because she
first had to secure the safety of her family in Manila.
The 15 charges against the Bajas are: forced labor; trafficking with
respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor;
slavery, peonage, involuntary servitude; unlawful conduct with respect
to documents in furtherance of trafficking, peonage, slavery,
involuntary servitude, and forced labor; Violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization act; Alien Tort Claims Act; federal minimum wage violation; state minimum wage violation; unlawful deduction from wages; state overtime violation; spread of hours violation; fraud; negligent misrepresentation; conversion; and conspiracy.
Ms Baoanan said Labaire International Travel, Inc., owned by the Bajas, “facilitated the visa application process, collected fees, provided temporary
housing, and organized the travel of Ms. Baoanan to New York.
Ms. Baoanan added the “defendants and their associates knowingly and
willfully conspired to lure Ms. Baoanan from the Philippines with false
promises of employment as a nurse in the U.S.” She was assisted in
filing the case by lawyers Aaron Mendelsohn of Troutman Sanders and Ivy
Suriyopas of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education fund, both
of New York.
Throughout the course of her work, Ms. Baoanan said, she was “not
compensated either with the federal or state minimum wage and nor paid
with her overtime work; and she consistently worked more than 40 hours a
week.”
She is seeking to recover her “lawful minimum and overtime wages, and
other damages, and attorneys’ fees.” She is also seeking redress “for
these violations of her basic human and civil rights.”
Ms. Baoanan also said that the Labaire International Travel is a travel
and employment agency that has offices not only in New York but also in Makati in the Philippines.
She said Labaire is owned or partly-owned by Mrs. Norma
Baja, who was also the president while Norma’s daughter Elizabeth B.
Facundo was vice president “during the period that Labaire facilitated
Ms. Baoanan’s visa application and travel from the Philippines to the U.S
Also in Manila, criminal and administrative charges were filed before the Office of the Ombudsman against Baja for alleged corruption. This case before Ombudsman Merceditas Navarro-Gutierrez is different from the one that was filed in New York recently by Baja?s former domestic helper.
In a complaint-affidavit, Jaime Jacob, a commissioner of the
Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, accused the former envoy of having
undue interest in the construction and repair of the official residence
of the UN ambassador in New York City, amounting to $48,498 or roughly
P2.18 million.
The complaint-affidavit was filed on March 12, 2008 and was obtained by
The Manila Times recently. It is the subject of a preliminary
investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman.


Posted by News Team | Filed Under US News 

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