OFW acquitted of murder in KSA gets DOLE help
Sep 27, 2020 • 2 min Read
The labor department has assured assistance to an overseas Filipino worker who was recently repatriated after being acquitted of murder in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said the government has worked closely on the case of Rose Dacanay Policarpio until she gained her freedom and will continue to help her to start anew.
Labor Attache Nasser Mustafa of the Philippine Overseas Labor Office in Riyadh said that Policarpio was repatriated last week, two years after being acquitted on the murder of her Lebanese employer.
In a report to Bello, Mustafa said Policarpio arrived in Saudi Arabia on June 3, 2013 after being deployed by her Philippine recruitment agency, Saranay Philippines Inc. as a food server for the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation.
However, she ended up as a household service worker to a Lebanese woman who was living alone. Barely two weeks after her arrival, she was falsely accused of the murder of her employer.
Policarpio denied the accusation and claimed that the crime was perpetrated by three unidentified men, who entered the house of her employer while she was out throwing garbage.
After the incident, she called her Saudi agency, who arrived at the scene with members of the Saudi police. She was detained thereafter and the case of murder was filed against her.
The Philippine Embassy in Riyadh provided her with a lawyer from the AI Kheraiji Law Office, which helped her obtain an acquittal in November 2018.
Policarpio was finally freed in December 2018. She was fetched from the police precinct by representatives of the Assistance to Nationals Section of the Embassy and was admitted at Bahay Kalinga on January 3, 2019.
After staying at the Bahay Kalinga for less than nine months, she was transferred to Lotuston Hotel, the temporary shelter maintained by the Embassy for distressed female OFWs with police cases. She stayed at the hotel for one year before her repatriation last week.
DOLE News Release
