In terms of institutions onsite, the government has 59 embassies, 20 consulates and 4 missions43. This is complemented with Philippine Overseas Labor Offices (POLO) in thirty-six locations, fifty-eight labor attaches at these offices, and thirty-one overseas welfare officersin posts with large numbers of migrant workers.44 There are options for returning migrant workers to access justice in the Philippines through the joint and several liability clause45 that ties the responsibility of the recruitment agency in the Philippines to the employer abroad. Additionally, the government has instituted programs for trafficked victims once back in the Philippines. 4.3 CSO Critique It is apparent that Filipino migrants go to countries where the jobs are available, without much regard to the criteria for deployment identified in the law. To date, Filipinos may be found in more than 238 countries and territories across the globe including to countries where there is currently a deployment ban like in Lebanon, Syria, Nigeria, Iraq and Libya. The policies are rendered ineffective as the workers' desire to find work far outweighs any consideration for their safety. And going through the backdoor, because of existing policies sans safety nets, further exposes the migrants to more risks and vulnerabilities46. In practice, the 2007 HSW policy reform package has not been entirely effective in its purpose of reducing vulnerabilities. The age requirement of twenty-three violates CEDAW articles 1, 2, 3, 5, 11 discriminating against both gender and occupation. Moreover, in spite of the age requirement recruitment agencies and foreign service personnel have encountered HSW under the age of both eighteen and twenty-three, either during the process of applying to be an HSW or while seeking assistance abroad.47 The issue of women migrant domestic workers being exploited does not have to do with the age of the domestic worker but on the precariousness of domestic work itself. As already mentioned above, both the zero placement fee policy and the minimum payment of 400 USD$ have been violated in practice. Domestic workers bound for Hong Kong pay up to four months of their salary in recruitment fees which adds up to over 80,000 Philippine pesos. In response to the ‘zero placement fee policy” recruitment agencies have masked these placement fees as fees for the Hong Kpng recruiters who are allowed to collect a placement fee equivalent to 10% of the workers’ monthly salary.48 This is also true for Taiwan but in this instance placement fees are re-labeled as training fees.49 43 44 http://dfa.gov.ph/about-us/phl/embassies-and-consulates DOLE Agency Profile, Hardcopy, 2015 45 RA10022, Section 7 A case in point is Lebanon where a deployment ban for migrant domestic workers is in effect since 2006 following the conflict at that time. From 2011 to middle of 2012, some 37,082 work visas were issued by the Lebanese Ministry of Labor to Filipino migrant domestic workers. The workers are documented in Lebanon but undocumented in the Philippines. Because of the deployment ban, Filipino women took the back door to exit the Philippines. They ended up going through circuitous routes with long hours of travel. What is more, some of them related that they were not paid on their first three months of work and received only US$200-250 a month, only half of the reuired minimum monthly salary of US$400 [Conversations with Filipino migrants in Beirut, September 2015]. 46 47 Center for Migrant Advocacy, “HSW Policy Reform Assessment,” p.8, June 2015, https://centerformigrantadvocacy.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/hsw-policy-reform-assess-final-version-aug-9.pdf 48 Alliance of Progressive Labor, License to exploit: A report on the recruitment practices and problems experienced by Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong”, p.26, http://www.idwfed.org/en/resources/license-to-exploit-areport-on-recruitment-practices-and-problems-experienced-by-filipino-migrant-domestic-workers-in-hongkong/@@display-file/attachment_1 49 CMA Case file 9 of 12