AS many as 14,000 former overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) may be declared eligible for back wages once the host government validates their qualifications, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) has said.

“We have generated a list of around 12,000 claimants. We have an additional number of workers who can’t provide their Iqama numbers. We included them anyway as a separate list so that the Saudi government can verify them,” DMW Secretary Susan Ople said in an online media briefing over the weekend.

Last month, the DMW called on all displaced Saudi OFWs with pending back pay from their former KSA employers to register with the department, which is coordinating the payment of the back wages with the Saudi government.

Covered OFWs are those who were displaced and left unpaid way back in 2015 and 2016 after several Saudi construction firms shut down after declaring bankruptcy...