MANILA, 12 May 2006 — President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo arrived in Manila yesterday from a four-day state visit to Saudi Arabia, ecstatic that the number of prisoners released from Saudi jails has reached 500.
Reporting on her visit, Arroyo told the nation that in addition to an assurance of a stable supply of oil from the world’s largest oil producer, she has also won assurances of more jobs for Filipino workers plus continued support for the peace process in the southern Philippines
“Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally of the Philippines not only because it hosts more than a million Filipino workers, but also because it is our leading supplier of oil and a leading supporter of our peace process in Mindanao,” Arroyo said on national television.
She said the 475 jailed Filipinos ordered released by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah during her state visit was in addition to about 207 others released in February in anticipation of her trip as a “gesture of friendship and compassion.”
Arroyo arrived in Manila about hours ahead of the Saudi Arabian Airlines plane that took the first 181 Filipinos home, including 95 women, 75 men, and 11 children and infants.
From the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, the workers were taken by bus to nearby Villamor Air Base where they met with the president to thank her and King Abdullah.
“The king has told me how he cherishes the Filipino workers,” Arroyo proudly reported to the nation.
Arroyo said the first group of former included 10 who were charged with homicide for whom the king paid diya or “blood money” to families of their alleged victims.
“The message to our people is that you can rely upon your government to intensify cooperation with Saudi Arabia to always take care of the welfare of our workers there,” she said.
Apart from the 10 held for homicide, the detainees were charged with “cultural crimes” such as drinking alcohol, bringing religious items, cockfighting and gambling, said Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomas, who was with Arroyo’s delegation.
In her meetings with Filipino community representatives in the Kingdom, Arroyo repeatedly thanked them for giving a good name to the Philippines.
The Philippines is largely dependent on millions of Filipino workers overseas, or OFWs, whose remittances are the country’s largest source of foreign earnings, making them the nation’s biggest export “commodity,” according to economists.
Saudi Arabia is the biggest employer of OFWs, with the number estimated by the Philippine government at more than a million this year.
In addition to providing jobs for about one million Filipinos, Saudi Arabia also supplies 40 percent of the Philippines’ oil needs.
Saudi Arabia is also an influential member of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a strong supporter of Manila’s quest for a peaceful settlement of the separatist movement in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao.
Mindanao is the traditional Filipino Muslim homeland where the government is trying to settle a decades-long separatist rebellion.
Arroyo said she was “harnessing strategic diplomacy to protect the national interest” and trying to gain more investments to spur domestic and overseas jobs for Filipinos.
She said Saudi Aramco, the government’s partner in Philippine oil refiner Petron Corp., will study the feasibility of building an oil refinery in the southern Mindanao region, and will proceed with a $300 million investment in a petrochemical plant in Bataan province west of Manila.
Arroyo also said Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud would send a team to look into possible investments in tourism in the Philippines.
The activist group Migrante, whose members include relatives of OFWs, said Arroyo had not mentioned hundreds more left behind in jails in the Middle East or sexual abuses suffered by Filipino women workers there. (With reports from Agencies)
