Group opposes envoy appointment

A party-list congressman representing overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) is opposing the nomination of Mohammad Omar Fajardo as the country’s ambassador to Iraq.

Due to the opposition of ACTS-OFW Rep. Aniceto Bertiz, the Commission on Appointments committee on foreign affairs chaired by Sen. Panfilo Lacson on Wednesday deferred acting on the appointment of Fajardo, a political appointee.

The committee also postponed voting on the nomination of another political appointee, Manuel Teehankee, as representative to the World Trade Organization in Geneva.

In a letter to Lacson, Bertiz said he was registering his “reservation” on Fajardo’s designation “based on the complaints of more than 300 of my constituents who are former and current OFWs and job applicants.”

“My constituents accuse Mr. Fajardo of large-scale illegal recruitment and estafa. According to their signed statements, Mr. Fajardo conspired with a certain Lucia Manansala. They allegedly promised the complainants jobs as factory workers, cooks, waitresses and managers in New Zealand in 2014. They were never deployed,” Bertiz wrote.

He said Manansala supposedly collected P24,000 to P26,000 from each applicant. Criminal cases were filed against Manansala in 2016 and she was arrested and arraigned in February 2017, he added.