Airlines ready special flights to bring home OFWs from Kuwait

MANILA — President Rodrigo Duterte ordered at the weekend the extension of the deployment ban on overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to Kuwait, and leading carriers Philippine Airlines and Cebu Pacific announced plans to mount special flights to help bring home OFWs wishing to return after suffering abuse.

A group of recruitment companies expressed support for Duterte’s decision, which Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III is expected to formalize with a department order to be issued Monday.

Duterte, who had earlier suspended deployment of mostly household service workers (HSWs) to Kuwait, moved further for a total ban on hearing more reports of abuse.

According to Bello, the OFWs now working in Kuwait will not be forced to come home, however. Most of the abuse has been reported among household service workers. The Philippines also sends skilled workers to Kuwait.

According to data gathered by support groups for OFWs, at least 120 Filipino workers were reported to have died in Kuwait in 2017, many of them simply listed as “suicides.”

The latest shocking case was that of Joanna Dimapilis, whose body was found in a freezer in a home in Kuwait rented by her employers, a Lebanese man and his Syrian wife. The couple left their home nearly a year ago and are believed to have returned to Lebanon. Interpol is helping track them down in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Cebu Pacific and Philippine Airlines announced plans to mount special flights in order to bring home hundreds of OFWs who wish to return from Kuwait, where many of them were reported victims of abuse.

“In support of President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s request for Philippine carriers to help repatriate Filipino OFWs in Kuwait, Philippine Airlines will be mounting a special flight from Kuwait to Manila within the next few days,” PAL said in a statement late Saturday.

PAL said it will be utilizing its 363 – seater Airbus A330.