VP RACE: ‘SHADING’ READY FOR RULING

Five Filipinos were kidnapped in seemingly unrelated incidents in Libya and Iraq over the weekend, officials in the two countries said on Saturday.

The first group of three Filipino technicians were abducted on Friday with a Korean coworker at a water plant of the Great Man-Made River in AlHassouna near Ishwirif in south eastern Libya.

The second group, among them two Filipino women, were kidnapped on Saturday in Iraq on a road connecting Baghdad to the oil city of Kirkuk, military, police and local officials told Reuters.

The Department of Foreign Affairs had no statement on the identities and circumstances of the kidnapped Filipinos, but Iraqi officials said the women were traveling with three other Filipinos to Erbil.

Fixing car

Their car broke down on the road and they were fixing it when unidentified men in a yellow ve- hicle forcibly took the women, two military sources said.

The two women were kidnapped in an area where Islamist militants were known to operate, like in Libya, where al-Qaida and Islamic State militants are plentiful, especially in the desert.

Managers of the Great Manmade River project confirmed the abduction of the Filipino workers in a statement and demanded their immediate release.

The Great Man-Made River, conceived by slain Libyan lead- er Moammar Gadhafi, is a network of underground pipes that supply water to the Libyan cities of Tripoli, Benghazi, Sirte, among others, from the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System across the Sahara Desert.

Defying ban

The three Filipino workers were apparently among the 3,000 Filipinos who still work in Libya despite the government ban on the deployment of workers.

Before the 2011 uprising that led to the ouster and death of Gadhafi, at least 26,000 Filipinos worked in the North African nation.

But the Philippine government repatriated about 10,000 workers in 2011 at the start of the Arab Spring and another 4,000 workers in 2014 when civil war broke out.

The Philippines stopped the deployment of Filipinos to Libya in 2011. It lifted the ban the following year, but reimposed it in 2014 due to the dete- rioration of the political and security situation.

The Libyan government appealed that for the lifting of the ban on deployment of Filipino workers, saying the security situation has improved since 2014.

Libyan Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Ahmed Eddeb said last December that Libyan employers preferred to hire Filipino workers in the oil field, medical and construction sectors due to their proven competence and dedication.—