65-year-old returns to Kuwait, hopes to retire in 2016

BY the time his story sees print, he is now back in the desert.

Yes, 65-year-old Leomidas C. Zafra is not about to hand over his desert jersey yet, not after experiencing two wars and certainly past the 65-year-old mandatory retirement for workers here in the Philippines.

A Mining Engineering graduate of the University of the Visayas, Zafra ventured to the Middle East in 1978, first in Yemen and then in Kuwait to work with the Kuwait Oil Company from 1985 to present.

“The wars were traumatic,” Zafra said.

When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 that resulted in the US-led Operation Desert Storm, Zafra was somewhere in the desert.

“It was difficult to escape, war was everywhere and it took the Philippine Embassy and Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (Owwa) a few months to rescue us from Kuwait,” he recalled.

He received U$4,000 from the United Nations when he repatriated to the  Philippines, supposedly to start life anew, but he went back to Kuwait after a few months.

Then the second war broke out in 2000.

“I have seen the bullets and missiles in the air everyday during the second war. The bullets even landed in our house but, we cannot do anything about it.” Zafra said.

He was living between the boarder of Iraq and Kuwait when the second war broke out..

“Our escape was foiled when the buses we were on was seized by Iraqi soldiers,” Zafra said.

He recalled camping in the desert after their buses were taken by Iraqi soldiers.

“We had no choice but to stay in the tents given by the government. We built our tents under a big tree but, we can’t sleep because we were afraid that we might die if  the missiles hit  us,” Zafra  recalled.

Although admitting to have been traumatized by the wars, he was quick to add that the company he was working with accepts him every time he comes back and does not  impose age limit on their workers.

“I am glad that our employer never tried to abuse us unlike the sad stories we often hear.  We can even work there as long as we can.” Zafra said.

“The hard work in Kuwait was all worth it. One of my children is now working in Singapore while the other works with a multinational company here,” Zafra said.

After encountering two wars, Zafra admitted that he discouraged his children (both women) to work in the Middle East.

“I discouraged women to worked in the Middle East because it is unsafe. Every day, OFW’s go to the Embassy to asked for help because of abuse by their employers. ” Zafra said.

Zafra was scheduled to go back to Kuwait last week.

“I guess, I’m gonna finish my contract in 2016, that is when I will finally retire,” Zafra said.

Kuwait is one of the top oil producing countries in the Middle East.  Some 150,000 Filipinos are working there as of 2011.

Remittances from the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) have been shoring up the country’s economic growth. In 2011, OFWs sent back home about $23-billion   or about a trillion pesos.

In terms of overseas workers remittance, according to the 2011 Global Forum on Migration and Development held in December in Geneva, the Philippines ranked fourth worldwide after India ($58 billion), China ($57 billion) and Mexico ($24 billion).  /Careen L. Malahay, Correspondent