The news item by Juan Escandor, Jr. with title “POEA orders Suarez to pay workers P4M” is false, downright irresponsible and grossly unfair reporting.

        The truth is, the POEA never ordered Suarez to pay Edwin Victa, Noel Rodriguez, Antipas Pardinas and Allan Rafa the amount of P4M or any amount for that matter.

        It was through the POEA, Office of the Legal Counsel, that the U.S. Department of Labor coursed the full payment by BASCON Corporation (a foreign principal employer based in Guam) of the claims of the four workers that they lodged before the said U.S. department. The four workers in fact, resorted to blatant forum shopping over the same claims by filing exactly similar claims with the NLRC and other offices.

        The four workers actually received from BASCON Corporation the amount of $3,750.00 each as full satisfaction of their claims with the U.S. Department of Labor. BASCON opted not to go through a formal hearing anymore and decided to settle the claim without necessarily admitting the validity of the claims. The news report, however, was slanted in such a way that the reader would get the impression that BASCON was found of wrongdoing and was penalized by the U.S. Department of Labor.

        On the contrary, the POEA Legal Counsel was in fact all praise and admiration for BASCON Corporation inasmuch as it is an extreme rarity that a foreign principal would acknowledge and graciously award Filipino workers their claims and continue to accept workers from the Philippines. It is distressing though that some people would exploit this and try to make dirty money out of it.

        The decision of the Labor Arbiter Rolando Bobis of Sub- RAB V, NLRC, Naga City, awarding whopping millions of pesos to the four workers over the same claims that were settled at the U.S. Department of Labor is now under appeal at the National Labor Relations Commission in Quezon City because the decision is full of serious errors in the findings of facts and application of pertinent law (among which is the non-finding of the obvious forum shopping) which, if not corrected, would cause grave or irreparable injury to our client Eduardo C. Suarez plus the fact that there was grave abuse of discretion on the part of the Labor Arbiter effectively resulting to a mockery of due process.

CARPIO & GENERAL LAW OFFICE
Counsel for Eduardo C. Suarez