Singapore offers to help fly home distressed Filipinos in Saudi Arabia

Singapore is offering to fly home Filipinos and other Southeast Asian nationals as it deploys military aircraft to repatriate Singaporeans who want to leave the Middle East due to the raging war in the region, its top envoy to Manila said Wednesday.

Ambassador Constance See told GMA News Online that she already conveyed to the Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila the Singaporean government’s offer to help repatriate Filipinos aboard Singaporean aircraft that are being dispatched to the troubled region.

A Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF) A330 multi-role tanker transport plane will be deployed to the Saudi Arabian City of Jeddah on Friday, March 12, the envoy said. The Singaporean Embassy cannot determine the exact number of seats that could be allocated to Filipinos until it receives a reply from the DFA, See said.

“There is an ASEAN agreement to help each other’s nationals especially in countries where our members do not have a diplomatic presence in times of emergency, disasters or conflict,” See told GMA News Online in a phone interview.

The Singapore Air Force deployed an aircraft to the Saudi capital of Riyadh Wednesday to repatriate Singaporeans, who wanted to leave the Middle East after the United States and Israel unleashed airstrikes against Iran, killing its leader and other top officials.

Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks against neighboring Gulf countries hosting US military bases and those with close ties to Washington, endangering the security of tens of thousands of Filipinos workers across the volatile region.

The ongoing war is a major concern for the Philippines in the Middle East, where more than 2.4 Filipinos live and work, including more than 30,000 in Israel. 

Ensuring their safety, including by evacuations, has been a logistical challenge in the past.

Singapore is prepared to provide assistance to Filipinos and nationals of other fellow ASEAN member states. Singapore’s aircraft helped brought home nationals from Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and even Korea in a previous evacuation flight in Oman, See said.

The Philippines has also extended similar evacuation assistance to nationals of other countries when hostilities broke out in Libya in 2014. — RSJ, GMA Integrated News