6/8/2020 E-Library - Information At Your Fingertips: Printer Friendly The POEA Administrator, in finding petitioners liable to private respondent for medical benefits accruing to the latter under the Social Insurance Law of Saudi Arabia, took judicial notice of the said law. To this extent, the POEA Administrator's actuations are legally defensible. We have earlier ruled in Norse Management Co. (PTE) vs. National Seamen Board[12] that evidence is usually a matter of procedure of which a mere quasi-judicial body is not strict about. Although in a long line of cases, we have ruled that a foreign law, being a matter of evidence must be alleged and proved, in order to be recognized and applied in a particular controversy involving conflicts of laws, jurisprudence on this matter was not meant to apply to cases before administrative or quasi-judicial bodies in the light of the well-settled rule that administrative and quasijudicial bodies are not bound strictly by technical rules.[13] Nonetheless, only to this extent were the acts of the POEA Administrator amply supported by the law. Her actual application thereof, however, is starkly erroneous. Section 6(a) of the Overseas Employment Agreement entered into and signed by the private parties herein, provides that "Workmen's Compensation insurance benefits will be provided within the limits of the compensation law of the host country."[14] That compensation for disability was to be provided in accordance with the law of the host country, Saudi Arabia, is a necessary consequence of the compulsory coverage under the General Organization for Social Insurance Law of Saudi Arabia (hereafter, "GOSI Law of Saudi Arabia"), upon all workers, regardless of nationality, sex or age, who render their services within the territory of Saudi Arabia by virtue of a labor contract. Article 49 of the GOSI Law of Saudi Arabia provides that the General Organization shall pay to the beneficiaries the insurance compensation, the employer being under no obligation to pay any allowance to the insured or to his heirs unless the injury has been intentionally caused by the employer or the injury has occurred by reason of the latter's gross error or failure to abide by the GOSI Law or the rules relating to occupational health and safety.[15] Under the GOSI Law of Saudi Arabia as pleaded by petitioners clearly the obligation to pay medical benefits as compensation for work-related injury or illness, devolves upon the General Organization and not upon petitioners. Furthermore, after taking judicial notice of the GOSI Law of Saudi Arabia, the POEA Administrator considered the said law as one of a similar nature as that of our own compensation laws. Thus, in awarding the medical benefits to private respondent, she rationalized the same by quoting Article 166 of the Labor Code of the Philippines which provides that "the State shall promote and develop a tax-exempt employees' compensation program whereby employees x x x in the event of work-connected disability or death, may promptly secure adequate income benefit and medical or related benefits." Indeed, we may postulate further that the policies underlying our compensation laws and the GOSI Law of Saudi Arabia being similar, the nature thereof could not be so dissimilar. Suffice it to say that our own compensation program imposes on the employer nothing more than the obligation to remit monthly premiums to the State Insurance Fund and it is the latter, not the employer, on which is laid the burden of compensating the employee for any disability; in fact, once the employer pays his share to the fund, all obligation on his part to his employees is ended.[16] No showing at all has there been that petitioners had failed to comply with its obligations as employer under the GOSI Law of Saudi Arabia. elibrary.judiciary.gov.ph/thebookshelf/showdocsfriendly/1/33843 3/5