OFW falsely sued for faking school records stays jobless in KSA

A Filipina nurse in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been rendered jobless for almost a year, after she was mistakenly charged for falsifying her school records.

In an interview with GMA News Online, Felirose Lavinia Prada Arnesto, a registered nurse from Cebu, said the Saudi Arabia Ministry of Health accused her of faking her documents when, upon verification from her school, there was no record showing she graduated as nurse.

But the mistake had began with the miscommunication between a data verification group and her school. 

She said data verification group Dataflow sent a request for her records to the wrong branch of her school, and the school, of course, replied that her name is not found on the list of its nursing graduates.

This was the Saudi Ministry of Health's basis for filing a case against her that threw the 26-year-old Cebuana nurse out of her job in the Kingdom which she had held for over a year.

She said her school has four branches, and the verification request had been sent to one of the four, which was not the branch from which she graduated.

“After ng mga ilang buwan, mga three months duon ko nalaman nang pinakita ng Minsitry of Health na pinakita nila sa akin ang resulta ng data flow verification, duon ko nakita na hindi pala na-submit yung paper ko, hindi pala na verify sa tamang school kung saan ako nag graduate,” she said. 

Moreover, she said it took her and her family in Cebu months to correct the records submitted by Dataflow to the KSA health ministry.

“Eleven months din akong nakatago dito lang sa bahay. Hindi kasi ako maka trabaho, lisensya ko kinuha tapos pag nakita daw ako nagtatrabaho ikukulong daw ako. Hindi ko alam kung ano kasalanan ko wala po ako kasalanan,” Arnesto said.

With her mother's help, Arnesto was able get her records after coordinating with the Department of Foreign Affairs office in Cebu, and the intervention of the Philippine Embassy in Riyadh.

Philippine Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Adnan Alonto said his office immediately requested for re-verification of her school records.

"Doon nga po nagkaroon ng second look at we found out na may pagkakamali nga and its very unfortunate that it took that long. But as far as the embassy is concern, we immediately took the immediate action as soon as it was referred to us," said Alonto.

Also, Alonto promised to extent assistance to Arnesto, who is now mulling the possibility of filing a complaint against the school's registrar.  —Ronaldo Concha/LBG, GMA News