MANILA, 24 July 2006 — The first Filipino evacuees from strife-battered Lebanon arrived yesterday to a rousing welcome from relatives and officials who met their charted flight at a Philippine air force base.
“Happy homecoming our beloved workers” read streamers at the Villamor Air Base, where the Philippine Air Force band played festive music and dozens of people including President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo greeted 232 Filipinos — three of them infants — on the flight from Damascus, Syria.
Three of those who arrived were infants brought home by their mothers, who all worked as domestic helpers in the Lebanese capital.
They were the first to emerge from the Jordan Aviation JAV 3911 after it rolled to a stop outside a hangar at the airbase in Manila’s southern suburb of Pasay City at around 2:35 p.m.
The Philippines on Saturday ordered Filipinos working in southern Lebanon to “pack up and run” due to impending attack by Israeli forces.
Arroyo boarded the plane to greet the evacuees before they disembarked, and later talked with relatives and workers at the base.
“I assure you all, I assure the nation that we are doing everything in our power so that ... (we can ensure) the safety of those who need to remain in Lebanon, and those who wish to leave are being transported out in an orderly way,” Arroyo said in a speech.
She called the workers “new heroes” for working overseas to support their families and country.
About 30,000 Filipinos have been working in Lebanon, most as domestic helpers. Numerous Filipinos working overseas send home billions of dollars (euros) a year, a vital part of the country’s economy.
More Coming
Arroyo said she expects at least two more groups of Filipinos to return today and tomorrow, with the help of the Bahraini government.
“We are doing everything in our power (to ensure) the safety of those who need to remain in Lebanon, and those who wish to leave are being transported out in an orderly way,” she said.
The first OFWs to arrive in Manila fled Lebanon in buses Thursday and Friday for Damascus, the staging point of their more than 17-hour flight home.
The DFA said 65 of the Filipinos who left Lebanon were still in Damascus as the plane could not carry them adding members of the government’s crisis team in the Middle East, which included Undersecretary (for Special Concerns Rafael) Seguis and (Honorary) Consul (Fadi Antoine) Debahy (who heads the Philippine Consulate in Syria), were making separate arrangements for their return flight to Manila.
“We will exert every effort until every Filipino who wishes to leave Lebanon is able to do so,” said Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo.
“We shall spare no cost in ensuring the safety of our workers in Lebanon, including their repatriation to the Philippines,” he added.
Traumatic Experience
Relatives of the returning OFWs, some arriving at Villamor as early as 10 a.m., waved Philippine flags as the workers descended the stairs from the airliner and walked into the hangar as festive music played in the background.
After a brief welcome message, Arroyo chatted with some of the passengers including a 10-year-old boy, later identified as Robbie Pingol, an OFW’s son.
In an interview with a local radio show, the boy said the president asked about his experience in Lebanon when war between Israel and the Hezbollah erupted.
“I said I was always afraid. I can hear the bombs but I did not see them,” Robbie said.
Robbie’s mother, Edith, said OFWs who were camping in evacuation center in Beirut and waiting to be repatriated to the Philippines were badly in need of food. She said the food supplies in the evacuation center were starting to run out.
A woman identified only as Delia of Sta. Mesa, Manila, told a radio commentator she was “well” after what she called “a long and endless trip.”
Marivic from Iloilo province, who returned with her 10-month old daughter, told a radio station she had “begun thinking we might not make it” out of Lebanon after Israel began battering its Middle Eastern neighbor with air and artillery strikes more than a week ago.
“It was really traumatic. We did not imagine that we would survive,” said evacuated maid Deborah Ponte of her experience at her British employer’s home in Saida, north of Beirut.
“All the warplanes were passing over our roof, and the explosives were falling like sand,” said Ponte, 22.
OWWA Booths
The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) put up booths to facilitate the processing of papers of the returning workers, some of whom will be going home with their families. Those not met by relatives at the airbase will stay temporarily at the OWWA office in Pasay City.
Foreign affairs and labor officials were also on hand to meet the returning workers as was Lebanese honorary consul to Manila, Joseph Assad.
Ponte and another maid, 25-year-old Marilyn Modesto both worked for the same British employer, and claimed their boss had tried to keep them from leaving, hiding them in a hotel after learning that they had called the Philippine Embassy. An embassy staffer collected them from the hotel.
Department of Foreign Affairs spokesman Gilbert Asuque said hundreds of Filipinos remain in the area, and embassy officials were in touch with coordinators to help them evacuate safely. The Philippine labor attaché in Lebanon has been told to ask employers to let Filipino helpers leave. Some employers reportedly refused to let Filipino maids leave because they have been paid in advance, while other workers’ employers have them to areas believed safe — or abandoned them. The evacuees who arrived yesterday had sheltered in a Catholic church in Beirut before fleeing to Syria.
The plane chartered by the Philippine government to take them home developed a technical problem, delaying their arrival, Asuque said. (With reports of Agencies)
