More OFWs flee Syria as violence rises

MANILA, Philippines—The government is set to evacuate 164 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from Homs and three other protest hubs in Syria where the “violence has become very alarming,” according to the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Raul Hernandez, the DFA spokesperson, yesterday said they had received “a total of 278 repatriation applicants from the four conflict areas and 222 of them were from Homs,” a city in central Syria.

“We have already repatriated 114 OFWs, leaving 164 others awaiting evacuation from the Syrian cities,” Hernandez said.

He said the Philippine Embassy in Damascus was “working on the instruction of Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario to fully and effectively implement crisis alert level 4 (mandatory or forced repatriation) due to the security situation in Syria.”

Del Rosario, meanwhile, said the DFA was ready to activate its “rapid response team” to help distressed OFWs in the Middle East country.

“Based on new developments in Homs, we may need to go one step further and resort to a strategy of extraction,” Del Rosario told the Inquirer.

He said the rapid response team would be “made up of personnel from the Philippine National Police, Department of Labor and Employment and the DFA.”