based Filipino migrant workers' group has asked Malaca?ang to fulfill its promise to save the life of domestic helper Jakatia Pawa, who was sentenced to death by a Kuwaiti court for killing the daughter of her employer, the Philippine Daily Inquirer newspaper said Saturday. The Kuwaiti Supreme Court has affirmed the death verdict on the 31-year-old Zamboanga del Norte native, now detained at the Kuwait Central Jail, news reports said Friday. The Inquirer said John Leonard Monterona, Migrante-Middle East regional coordinator, made a new appeal to the Palace to “exhaust all means to ensure the commutation of (Pawa's) death sentence,” which was also upheld earlier by Kuwait's Court of Appeals. The Inquirer said Monterona email the newspaper that the group was “preparing for the same battle waged by various OFW groups all over the world to save (Filipina maid) Flor Contemplacion,” who was sentenced to hang by Singaporean authorities in 1995 for the murder of her young ward and a fellow domestic helper. “We're watching closely the case of Jakatia Pawa. (President Gloria Macapagal) Arroyo once said she would intervene on her case, as well as those of 40 other OFWs on death row. We'll see if the president will be true to her word or break her promise,” the Inquirer quoted Monterona as saying. Pawa was first sentenced to death by a Kuwaiti in 2007 on the charges that she killed the 22-year-old daugther of her employer for whom she had worked for more than five years. Friday, GMANews.TV reported that Foreign Affairs undersecretary for migrant workers' affairs Esteban Conejos Jr. said the Philippine government is working for the issuance of tanazul or forgiveness from the victim's family to save Pawa from the death penalty. “After achieving this, Vice President Noli De Castro will go to Kuwait to hand over a written letter from President (Gloria) Arroyo to the Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah to ask for commutation of her sentence from death to life imprisonment,” Conejos was quoted as saying in a press briefing. Conejos was said to expressed hopes that Pawa will be spared the death penalty, as with the case of Filipina maidss Marilou Ranario and Mae Vecina.Vecina also in Kawait.
