The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) revealed that around 47,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) are still stuck in the Middle East due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The DFA said that they are still waiting for additional funds to bring them home.
“We’re still looking at around 47,000 Filipinos stuck in the Middle East,” DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs Sarah Lou Arriola told the Senate.
“There are more and more people who become jobless and there are a lot of people who became undocumented because they don’t have jobs anymore and they’re sponsors already let go of them,” Arriola explained.
Ariola said that most of the OFWs who are stranded are tied with the kafala system, wherein a migrant worker’s immigration status is legally bound to an individual employer or sponsor (“kafeel”) during the contract period.
“They cannot come home unless they’re allowed by their original employers,” Arriola added. “Some of the employers would ask us to pay for the deployment costs, which as of now, we’re also doing that but, of course, quietly. If we don’t do that, we won’t be able to bring them home,” Arriola added.
Arriola said that they are still waiting for the special allotment release order (SARO) for the additional budget.
“Once we get our SARO, we will resume all our flights because we’ve been chartering already a lot of flights,” she added.
