A group of Hong Kong employment agencies has written to Manila to complain about a new digitised system being introduced by the Philippine consulate’s labour office in the city, and accuse the outgoing labour attaché of a conflict of interest.

But the founder of the company responsible for revamping the labour office’s database – which stores domestic workers’ information, and tracks employers and employment agencies – says it will improve efficiency and allow the Philippine government to better protect its citizens.

“If you are a bad actor – I am not saying these agencies are – of course you will be concerned. Some who have gotten away with the current status quo may be petrified by any change,” said Jaime Deverall, CEO of social enterprise Polaris Tools, which is developing the new system.

“All we are doing is introducing a system that will allow [the Philippine Overseas Labour Office] to do its work more effectively and better protect the workers … Bad agencies will be more easily exposed and good agencies will be rewarded. Agencies will also benefit from a much faster processing of the contracts.”

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The letter sent to Manila, signed by “a group of HK agencies seeking justice” – which only included one handwritten signature – alleges irregularities in the bidding process for the digitisation contract and a number of conflicts of interest. It states that “a reliable source” has found Polaris Tools “is very closely related” to workers’ rights groups, advocates and the Fair Employment Agency – a non-profit organisation that places domestic workers in Hong Kong at no cost to them.

The same unnamed group of agencies also accused Jalilo Dela Torre, the outgoing Filipino labour attaché, of disclosing information from employers and workers to the Fair Employment Agency.

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Dela Torre, who stepped down earlier this month and has been assigned to a new post in Saudi Arabia, dismissed the claims made against him in the letter.

“I think this is happening because I have been very vocal and active punishing agencies that violate procedures,” he said.

“They are probably part of the agencies who wanted me out of Hong Kong a while back, and now they are probably trying to make sure I do leave this post, while discrediting my legacy.”

Deverall, of Polaris Tools, said he was “shocked” by the allegations. He presented a proposal to revamp the database in January after receiving an invitation to do so the previous month, he said, adding that the panel who heard his presentation comprised five members of the labour office and one agency owner. Three other bids were made, including one from the previous provider.

Deverall said he was informed that his company had been chosen in February, and a contract was signed about a month later.

“We wanted this contract to be as transparent and clear as possible,” he said. “So no member of our team can be a member of an accredited agency here or in the Philippines. We also included a clause saying that we will fully comply with the privacy ordinance and that we cannot sell data to third parties.”

This week, Deverall sent a letter – endorsed by 34 Hong Kong-based employment agencies – to the Philippine Labour and Employment Secretary Silvestre Bello III introducing the work that is being done in Hong Kong.

A handwritten statement by Allan Smith – owner of Arrow Employment Services and representative of the employment agencies during the bidding process – was also sent, saying that out of the four proposals submitted, Polaris’ “was by far the best solution” for the labour office and agencies. “It protects our customers’ data, is cost effective and gives [the labour office] good tools for monitoring agencies,” he wrote.

On Sunday evening, Deverall also had a meeting in Hong Kong with Salvador Panelo, spokesman and chief legal counsel for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. “He seemed very interested in the venture and said the government would stand behind anything that protects overseas Filipino workers,” the Polaris Tools boss said.

Bringing change

Deverall, a 22-year-old Filipino-Australian who was raised in Hong Kong and recently graduated from Stanford University among the top 10 in his class, previously built a secure storage system for bitcoin for a financial tech company in Silicon Valley. But instead of taking a high-paid job in the US, he decided to launch his own business in Hong Kong. “I feel that I should use my skills in areas that are underserved and that can have a big social impact,” he said.

He is developing the system for the Filipino labour office with company co-founder Jonah Bolotin, a 23-year-old American software engineer and fellow Stanford graduate.

Their company’s sole corporate shareholder, Migrasia, is a non-profit organisation ran by David Bishop and Lindsay Ernst – both professors at the University of Hong Kong. Bishop, whose name was mentioned by the unnamed employment agencies in their letter to Manila, helped found the Fair Employment Agency but resigned in March last year. He has been an outspoken advocate against rogue agencies and the lack of enforcement by the city’s authorities that leaves workers prone to abuse.

Hong Kong’s employment agencies make millions of dollars every year, thanks in large part to a growing community of about 390,000 foreign domestic workers – most of whom come from the Philippines and Indonesia.

Studies have shown that these workers are particularly vulnerable to abuse in Hong Kong, where there are no anti-human trafficking laws and forced labour is technically not a crime, because of indebtedness arising from illegal fees charged by some employment agencies.

Allegations of collusion between unscrupulous agencies and moneylenders have also emerged in recent years.

Dela Torre, the outgoing labour attaché, has no doubts that the new system being developed by Polaris Tools will help fight worker mistreatment and human trafficking. “This system will only make us more efficient and allow us to better record data of our workers as well as to identify more easily blacklisted employers and agencies,” he said.

“Also, all the private data will be much safer now. The previous system was outdated and vulnerable to attacks.”

Concerns and guarantees

Yee Choi, a director of the Hong Kong Home Services Association and owner of the Further Creation Employment Centre, said that most agencies welcomed the idea of having a new system because the one in place is “over a decade old” and provides few security guarantees.

However, he said that many agencies believed that “the system is being updated by a vendor [company] operated by a Hong Kong agency. With this, we fear it carries multiple hidden agendas.”

Choi, who said he was not involved in writing the letter to Manila, noted that doubts have emerged over the impartiality of the new provider. He also said that many people worried that data provided by agencies could be passed on to the Fair Employment Agency.

“The vendor/agency has access to all employers’ and helpers’ data, which could create market chaos, or monopoly of market,” Choi said.

Dela Torre attributed many of these concerns to a misunderstanding. “I think a lot of this has to do with a lack of familiarity with the new system,” he said.

Deverall also said that most of the claims have been fuelled by unfounded rumours.

“Of course we will not transfer any data to the Fair Employment Agency. That makes no sense,” he said. “We are building a more responsive and faster system for all agencies to use. And we want to work with everyone.”

He noted that “the data can only be seen by the agency that uploaded it and by [the labour office], which is the entity overseeing it”.

Accredited employment agencies need notarisation from the Philippine consulate to process workers’ contracts. Before any approval, the labour office verifies the worker’s details, as well as the track record of the agency and of the employer.

“[The labour office] does around 30 different checks manually for each contract. And they process about 700 a day, which makes it very hard to do all these checks properly. By digitalising this process, [they] will be able save a lot of time and costs,” Deverall said.

He added that agencies with the best track records will be granted “gold status”, meaning they can enjoy priority employment contract processing with no additional fee.

“We will also pre-empt the rejection of a contract whenever possible before they have to pay a fee,” he said.

Deverall said that his company’s services were being provided at no cost to the labour office, and that fees will be charged to employment agencies for each contract processed.

A pilot programme, planned for September, will begin with about 10 agencies, he said, with the full programme expected to be in place for all 300 accredited agencies in November.

“[The labour office] is trying to protect workers, but they can’t do it properly because they are drowned in paper work,” Deverall said. “If the system is proved to be efficient, it could even be used by other [Philippine Overseas Labour Offices] abroad.”