Philippine’s Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III and Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque flew to Kuwait to seek “normalization of ties” with the Middle Eastern country, Malacañang office of the president said on Wednesday evening. The meeting comes after Kuwait expelled Philippine Ambassador Renato Villa due to the allegedly illegal rescues of overseas foreign workers in Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government had also protested a video of these OFW rescues, which came from the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs itself. This crisis brought relations between the Philippines and Kuwait to their lowest point in years, with the welfare of 262,000 OFWs at stake.