90 Overseas Filippino Workers arrive from Syria

Around 90 overseas Filipino workers have been repatriated from Syria in the past three days, yet there are about 3,000 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who need to be sent home from that strife-torn state in the Middle East.

Thirty of the repatriated OFWs arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) yesterday while the previous 60 arrived at the same Manila airport on flight QR-644 of Qatar Airways on Tuesday, according to radio reports.

“The situation in Syria is worsening, and alert level in the place reached the dangerous signs calling for immediate evacuation,” Carmelita Dimzon, chief of the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration (OWWA), said on Wednesday.

Raul Hernandez, spokesman of the Department of Foreign Affairs, said early this month that Alert Level 4 calls for mandatory evacuation.

He had issued the statement in light of the Korean Peninsula situation, where Pyongyang then threated to launch missiles against South Korea and the United States over the duo’s joint military exercises.

The alert level for the Philippine Embassy in Seoul was placed then at 1, the lowest of the four levels, although the government had already laid out a contingency plan for OFWs in case of evacuation.

Dimzon said that her office, is exerting all efforts to bring home displaced OFWs from Syria upon the orders of President Benigno Aquino III. For the past two years they have been embroiled in a civil war between rebels and troops loyal to President Bashar Al Assad.

Representatives from OWWA, DFA and the Manila International Airport Authority welcomed the returning OFWs at Ninoy Aquino International Airport or NAIA.

Dimzon said the OFWs will be given assistance in getting to their home provinces while those who cannot go home immediately shall be accommodated in a halfway house in Manila.

31 OFWs arrived at NAIA from Syria, bringing to 3,764 the number of Filipinos whom the Philippine government had repatriated then from that violence-plagued country.
Repatriation efforts have been carried out by the Philippine embassies in the Syrian capital Damascus and the Lebanese capital Beirut.

 

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