NEVER AGAIN, LABOR CHIEF VOWS AFTER WORKERS’ ‘DISORDERLY’ HOMECOMING
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III gave an assurance on Friday that the next batches of overseas Filipino workers (OFWS) set to return home amid the pandemic would not suffer the same fate as those groups who were unduly kept in quarantine for nearly two months due to the delayed release of their coronavirus test results.
To prevent a repeat of the “disorderly” process of sending the OFWS home, Bello said the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) had set up a profiling system designed to expedite the workers’ transportation.
Around 42,000 more migrant workers are expected to return to the country next month, he said.
“For example, [if] you are from Cebu, you will be placed in a hotel or quarantine facility for all those from the Visayas. In that case, we can expedite their transport home,” Bello said.
Apology
He apologized for the “anxiety and discomfort that the unwarranted suffering” may have caused the earlier batches of quarantined OFWS, who were kept in isolation mostly in hotels for one and a half months, way past the 14-day mandatory period.
A total 19,010 out of 24,000 repatriates have already been sent home as of Friday, two days before President Duterte’s oneweek deadline for government agencies to send the migrant workers back to their families.
Bello added that another option being considered by the Dole to hasten the OFWS’ release is to have them tested for the coronavirus at their point of origin.
Meanwhile, he reported that nearly 200,000 medical front-liners had been kept from leaving the country due to the ban on the overseas deployment of health workers.
Only 1,107 health workers were able to leave, he said, since they had completed their employment papers by March 8, exempting them from the ban.
As to those who could not yet leave due to the health emergency, the Dole is considering hiring some of them as occupational safety officers, the labor chief added.