Manila urged to ensure safe return of Syria war-hit OFWs

RIYADH: A group of overseas Filipino workers (OFW) expressed their solidarity with their fellow OFWs trapped in civil war-torn Syria, and asked their government to repatriate the remaining Filipinos workers.
The group noted that the imposition of mandatory evacuation was too late because of the failure of the Philippine officials in Damascus to immediately analyze and act on the development of events in Syria leading to civil war.
But the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said that since March 2011, it has repatriated 1,806 OFWs from Syria, leaving about 8,000 to 9,000. One of the difficulties the DFA encountered is that Syrian employers asked for a deployment cost refund before issuing exit visas. This used to amount to $4,000, but since the violence got worse and more OFWs arrived in Syria through illegal recruiters, the price has gone up to $ 10,000. So far, exit visas have cost the DFA roughly 7.2 million Philippine Peso (SR 641,000), but Hernandez assured the public that the government still has the funding to repatriate Filipinos from war-torn countries.
The DFA said the Philippine Embassy in Damascus is renewing its appeal to Filipinos in Syria to avail of its mandatory evacuation program as tensions in the country continue to run high.
The Philippine Honorary Consuls in Aleppo and Homs, together with the Embassy, have negotiated for the release of OFWs in their areas of jurisdiction from their employment contracts, the DFA said.
According to the group there are 160 OFWs now at the Philippine Embassy in Damascus, while there are about 1,300 from all over Syria who have enlisted seeking assistance for evacuation and repatriation from the Philippine government, according to the DFA.
“There could be no safer place in a country besieged of civil war where there are intense hostilities,” a Filipino migrants rights group in the Middle East said in reaction to a DFA statement, quoting a report from its Damascus-based Charge de Affaires Alfredo M. Borlonga, that Filipinos were ‘relatively safe’ in Damascus, Syria’s capital.
On Friday DFA spokesman Raul Hernandez, however, added that there were clashes and explosions 10 kilometers away from where the Philippine embassy is located.
“It makes no sense in saying that OFWs in Damascus were ‘relatively safe’, in a place where rocket propel grenades and bullets are crisscrossing bearing an unwritten note ‘to whom it may concern’, which means everyone could be hit, unintentionally or as a target,” said John Leonard Monterona, regional coordinator of Migrante-Middle East.
Monterona added the ‘relatively safe’ remark by the DFA is misleading in its vain attempt to justify its own failure.
“The evacuation and repatriation efforts of the Philippine government were in disarray especially in the earlier stage before the Syrian civil war broke out.”
“The remark was a by-product of a ‘wait and see’ stance of the Philippine government, which is systemic in its entire bureaucracy. We may add the ‘11th hour’ rush mentality,” Monterona observed.
Monterona averred that these ‘relatively safe’ remarks, ‘wait and see stance’, and the ‘11th hour rush’, as well as negative attributes observed to ordinary Filipinos, must be eradicated in the Philippine bureaucracy in order to have an ‘efficient, effective, and even economical’ government.
“The evacuation and repatriation program for OFWs in Syria was poorly planned just like during the Libya upheaval,” the OFW leader added.
Monterona suggested the Philippine government through the DFA must require its diplomatic posts abroad to reassess their evacuation and repatriation plan regularly as often as possible while keeping updated on the peace and order situation in the host country.
“The repatriation must continue not only during civil war or calamities when it is undocumented who have voluntarily applied for repatriation.”