MANILA, Philippines -- They may not be related at any degree, but for 55-year-old Perla Tomas and her three wards who lost their parents to separate tragedies in Kuwait years ago, their ties are like what any mother has with her children.

Since 2006, Tomas, a long-time migrant worker in Kuwait, has been guardian to three children her dear friend Carolina Agustin left when she died of childbirth in May of the same year. The children’s Filipino father left his family for unexplained reasons when Agustin was pregnant.

The children have been under Tomas' care since, and were raised like her own in the family home in Kuwait.

“I feel like the Lord blessed me with them... When their mother died, I looked after them because I knew there was no one to look after them,” said Tomas, upon arrival in Manila, from Kuwait, on Monday.

The mother of two, a part-time beautician whose Filipino husband is employed in the Kuwait defense ministry, said she was determined to keep custody of the three children as none of their relatives had tried to look for them.

“I will bring them home, they will grow up here, go to school here. I will go back to Kuwait after three months, but I'll help them get settled first,” said the Nueva Ecija native, who has been shuffling back and forth from Kuwait for 24 years now.

The Agustin kids, aged 2, 5 and 8, were among seven Kuwait-born children who were sent to Manila from the land of their birth on Monday for lack of residency papers in Kuwait.

The group arrived at 3:50 p.m. along with 37 migrant workers repatriated for various employment woes, including unpaid wages and maltreatment.

“All of them (children) have penalties at the Kuwait immigration office because they have no passports. But through the efforts of (Philippine Ambassador to Kuwait) Ricardo Endaya, we arranged for them to be repatriated using travel documents,” said Darren Bejarin, Philippine protocol officer in Kuwait, who assisted the repatriates in Monday's flight.

He said the group was the fifth batch of Filipino repatriates to be flown back to Manila through an arrangement between the Embassy and Kuwait immigration.

Bejarin said the Department of Foreign Affairs' Overseas Migrant Workers' Affairs office would take care of turning over the children to their respective families.