MANILA, 11 August 2006 — Philippine officials yesterday pleaded with Filipino maids who are still in Lebanon to keep calm, to call the embassy first if they want to leave, instead of escaping from their employers.
“Instead of risking their lives trying to escape through the balconies, they should make the effort to inform the embassy so that our officials can make representations to their employers,” Labor Undersecretary Manuel Imson said.
Imson made the appeal as more Filipino domestics were reported to have escaped by climbing down the windows of their employers’ apartments, using makeshift ropes. He said interviews with some maids who have been repatriated from Lebanon that their employers would usually leave them alone in the house during the day and that there was a phone in the house.
He said those who have Filipino neighbors could also ask help from such neighbors. “They could also ask the other Filipinos to tell the embassy of their situation,” Imson said in Filipino.
More than 3,000 Filipinos have been evacuated from Lebanon so far, most of them domestic helpers. Two have died and several others were injured trying to escape as their employers have refused to release them.
Welfare officials identified the dead as Mary Jane Pangilinan and Michelle Tomagan, who were reported to have plunged to their death when the makeshift ropes they made by tying bedsheets end to end snapped.
One of the injured, Gemma Gabriel, arrived in Manila yesterday with a fractured leg. Janet Aliangan and Vanessa Butalan were flown to Manila on stretchers on Tuesday and immediately taken to the Philippine General Hospital (PGH) for further treatment.
Three others who were repatriated earlier — Maryjane Ibaan, Anna Cristina Sabiles and Priscilla Ronato — were taken to the PGH also for treatment of fractures.
Still another injury was reported by a television network from Lebanon, saying Sheryll Caray sustained back injuries after jumping from her employer’s third floor apartment in a bid to escape the war.
Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said a plan by the Philippine Coast Guard to send two of its ships to evacuate Filipinos out of Lebanon had been rejected by the task force in charge of evacuation efforts.
Vice President Noli de Castro, chief of Task Force Lebanon, has informed Malacañang about the task force's opinion that the plan was costly and impractical.
The Coast Guard said it would need an estimated 93 million pesos ($1.75 million) for the entire operation, which would entail ferrying Filipinos from Lebanon to Cyprus, and it would take the ships 15 days to reach their destination from Manila.
Undersecretary Esteban Conejos, head of the DFA's Office of Migrant Workers Affairs, it would be cheaper and quicker to hire ships that are already in the area.
“After looking at the operational, technical, and financial requirements of the proposal, the task force decided that it would not be appropriate to take up the proposal as of this time,” he said in a news briefing at Malacañang Palace yesterday.
The task force is readying the sea route in the event that the number of Filipinos seeking to flee Lebanon drastically increases, Conejos said.
He said the land route to Damascus, Syria, was "still the best option" at the moment. Most of those who have returned to the Philippines traveled by bus to Damascus, where they then took flights to Manila.
