MANILA, 21 August 2007 — A fact-finding team sent to Iraq to scrutinize the situation of overseas Filipino workers there has been able to facilitate the homecoming of 95 of these OFWs who had been trapped in Iraq. According to ABS-CBN’s Middle East bureau, the team headed by special envoy to the Middle East Ambassador Roy Cimatu convinced the OFWs to return to Manila as many of them had expired visas and job contracts. Cimatu’s mission was initially to visit a particular campsite where the company First Kuwaiti Trading and Contracting Company allegedly smuggled in 51 Filipinos in March 2006 despite a deployment ban. The smuggling was revealed by American paramedic Rory James Mayberry in a testimony before the US Congress. Cimatu has since been trying to trace the Filipinos and he discovered that only 11 Filipinos, not 51, went to Iraq. He tried to locate four of the Filipinos in Iraq with the help of Philippine Ambassador to Kuwait Ricardo Endaya and Philippine Charge d’Affairs to Baghdad Wilfredo Cuyugan. Cimatu, Endaya and Cuyugan were able to talk with the remaining four who said they were not forced to go to Iraq and were in a comfortable situation. “The aircraft they used had a seating capacity of 40. This proved that less than 50 were on the flight. According to the manifest, 11 were Filipinos and the rest were Indians and Pakistanis. I talked to the four and said they voluntarily went to work in Iraq,” Cimatu said. The team also discovered that three other OFWs on that flight had returned to the Philippines in 2006 and the team is now looking for the four others who it have allegedly transferred to other companies. “We are coordinating with the relatives of the four OFWs in Manila so they can try to convince their relatives to go home but up to now there is no response,” Cimatu said.
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