Hiring Filipino workers in Italy: contract verification at the MWO

Before a Filipino worker can leave for Italy, the employment contract has to be verified by the Migrant Workers Office, the Department of Migrant Workers unit based at the Philippine Embassy in Rome. The MWO, known until 2023 as the POLO, checks the employer, the job order and the contract. Without that verification the deployment is not regular.

What the MWO in Rome checks

Verification is not a reading of the contract text alone. The office looks at three things together: whether the Italian employer exists and can carry the hire, whether the job order matches the post actually offered, and what the contract states on pay, hours, accommodation and duration. If one of the three fails, the file stops before the consular stage.

The precondition is employer accreditation with the Department of Migrant Workers. Under DMW practice accreditation normally runs for four years unless revoked. An employer hiring a second cohort two years after the first therefore does not repeat the full accreditation review, but every new contract still has to be verified.

The document set the MWO in Rome asks for covers:

• the signed employment contract, in the version given to the worker;
• the worker's valid passport;
• the valid work permit, meaning the Italian authorisation for the hire;
• identity document and authority of the person signing for the company;
• the company's chamber of commerce extract (visura camerale);
• recent payslips, as evidence that the company can actually pay;
• the signed undertaking from the employer.

The list grows for Filipino workers already present in Italy who were never registered as migrant workers with the former POEA, now absorbed into the DMW. For these files the MWO in Rome asks for two additional documents: a notarised affidavit from the worker on the circumstances of recruitment, meaning how and through whom they reached Italy, and a declaration from the employer listing the Filipino nationals employed in the company.

These are reconstruction documents, not formalities. The affidavit establishes whether irregular recruitment took place; the employer declaration shows whether the company employs other Filipino workers in unverified positions. An employer who files an incomplete list and is then contradicted by another case in progress puts the whole relationship with the office at risk, not just the single contract.

The office processes files only when documentation is complete and payment has been verified. An application filed with an expired company extract, or without written authority for the signatory, does not join the queue: it sits until the file is complete, and the lost time is not recovered later.

The five step process

The MWO in Rome runs verification as five steps in sequence. None of them can be brought forward.

Step two is where most files stall. The labour attaché asks the employer to describe the job, the site, the headcount and the terms on offer. If the answers do not line up with the job order or with the payslips on file, verification is deferred and the file goes back. Step four is strict in form: the MWO processes a case only once payment has been verified, so a transfer with no recognisable reference has the same effect as no payment at all.

How it fits the Italian procedure

MWO verification sits after the Italian authorisation, not before it. The valid work permit is one of the documents required at verification, so the correct sequence is quota and nulla osta in Italy, then contract verification in Rome, then visa and departure. An employer who plans the start date off the Italian calendar alone has left out a step that takes place in Rome but answers to Philippine rules. The Italian side is set out in the decreto flussi quotas for 2026 to 2028 and in the work residence permit procedure.

Verification fees sit on top of the Italian hiring costs, which we have costed in the cost of hiring a non EU worker in Italy. An employer running a Philippine corridor for the first time can ask for a read of the file on the employers page.

The Philippine corridor into Italy runs cleanly when the two administrations are treated as two separate queues with their own requirements. MWO verification does not duplicate the Italian nulla osta: it examines the employer and the contract from the origin state's side, and its outcome governs departure as firmly as the visa does.