The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) backed the proposal to reduce the mandatory quarantine imposed on returning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
Labor Chief Silvestre Bello said that they will push the proposal to the Inter-Agency Task Force, especially for fully vaccinated OFWs.
“Usually our vacationing OFWs are given one month vacation. If you put them under quarantine for a maximum of 10 days, those days have been lost but should have been spent with their families,” Bello said in an online briefing.
“My recommendation especially for those that have been vaccinated after they arrive, have them tested, if they are negative send them to their home provinces,” he said.
Bello added that if there are moves to shorten the quarantine for investors, the principle should also apply to OFWs.
“If you can do that with investors, our OFWs, they have bigger investments, you are talking of billions they are giving the economy. Hopefully, the IATF will hear us. They can lower it from 10 five days, that’s okay with me,” he said.
Current IATF protocols mandate all arriving OFWs for a 10-day quarantine and testing on the 7th day. Once they tested negative they will do home quarantine for 4 more days.
“For me, that is too long,” Bello said.
He also defended OFWs from those blaming them for the COVID-19 variants.
“Of those 580,000 OFW returnees, not close to less than one percent has contracted COVID-19. So why would you blame them for the supposed transmission? So why do you attribute the spread of the virus to our OFWs? There is no legal, moral, factual basis to attribute to our OFWs the transmission of the virus. This is the only time we will be able to pay back our modern-day heroes,” Bello added.
