Philippine consul general in Dubai hails additional funding for repatriation

DUBAI — Faced with the gargantuan task of bringing home thousands of jobless overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), the Philippines' Consul General in Dubai Paul Raymund Cortes welcomed President Rodrigo Duterte’s approval of an additional P5 billion for the aid and repatriation of overseas Filipino workers amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interviewed by reporters here, Cortes said “overseas Filipino communities around the world welcome this development as it highlights the Philippine government's commitment to assist all Filipinos in a crisis such as this pandemic.”

He said the Philippine embassy and consulate in the UAE “await further guidelines and instructions from the Departments of Foreign Affairs as well as Labor and Employment in this regard.”

Cortes said the additional funding will allow for more repatriations but that “it will of course depend on the number of flights available.”

Recently, Cortes said the consulate was reviewing as many as 8,000 repatriation requests. Asked for updates, he said they have learned that among these requests, “many have double submissions, some have gone home, while some have decided to stay on and others have been employed already.”

“They would tell us that they have found employment and then request that they be stricken off the repatriation list,” he said.

According to Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) has sent almost 130,000 OFWs back to their home provinces since May 15, with the latest batch consisting of 1,185 returning Filipino migrant workers.

In Dubai, the latest to be repatriated was a batch of 354 OFWs who left Dubai International Airport in the evening of August 5 on board Philippine Airlines flight PR 659. Another batch of over 300 left on July 30 and still another on July 24.

According to DFA, some 35,656 of the 50,887 overseas Filipinos brought home in July were from the Middle East, with the biggest number of repatriates arriving from the UAE at14,948.

The Philippine Consulate General, which has so far repatriated some 1,600 OFWs, repatriated the first batch, numbering 370, in mid-June on board Cebu Pacific flight 5J19.

Bello said that DOLE had requested an additional P2.5 billion in funding to assist 597,000 OFWs through the department’s  one-time P10,000 or $200 cash aid to OFWs affected by the pandemic both on-site and stranded in the country through its Abot Kamay ang Pagtulong (AKAP) program.

DOLE's AKAP program had an initial funding of P2.5 billion, but Bello said the funds will soon be depleted after the department provided assistance to more than 233,000 land-based and sea-based workers, amounting to a total of P2.388 billion as of Saturday, August 8. — BM, GMA News