Gov’t adopts wait-and-see policy for OFWs in Libya

It’s wait and see for Filipinos in Libya requesting assistance from the Aquino administration.

President Aquino has directed the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli to see what it can do for Filipinos in Libya who want to go home now that rebels have charged into the Libyan capital, Malacañang said on Monday.

Deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said Mr. Aquino gave the instructions as the government had been advised by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for Philippine Embassy officials to remain indoors.

The IOM said it was “extremely unsafe for our people in the embassy to go out now to check the situation of our fellow Filipinos,” according to Valte.

“The President has given the instructions to validate the situation and to see what else can be done for the Filipinos who want to be repatriated,” she said.

86 want to return

So far, Valte said that 86 Filipinos in Libya were asking to be repatriated. Most of the remaining Filipinos in Libya are nurses and medical workers.

Valte also asked Filipinos to contact the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli before deciding to move out of their homes or workplaces.

She said Mr. Aquino had asked officials to keep him abreast of the developments in Libya.

Valte also said the Palace was prepared to deal with the situation.

“We were able to respond quickly,’’ she said, adding that Foreign Undersecretary Rafael Seguis was now in Libya to oversee the situation.

The Department of Labor and Employment, Valte said, will assist overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) coming home.

Boxing may be over soon

Acting Foreign Secretary Antonio Rodriguez said “if the rebel forces succeed in taking over Tripoli within 24 hours, the boxing is over, the story ends.”

But “nobody knows what’s on (Gadhafi’s) mind, what he’s going to do. Whether he would stay or go elsewhere,” Rodriguez said.

That is why, “it is wait and see (for the Department of Foreign Affairs team in Libya) before making a decision” on the planned evacuation of the remaining 1,700-plus Filipinos in Tripoli and Benghazi, he said.

Foreign Undersecretary Esteban Conejos Jr. disclosed that the Geneva-based IOM had reserved at least 400 seats for OFWs in an IOM-chartered ship that would bring fleeing migrant workers from Tripoli to Alexandria in Egypt for flights to Manila.

In a report to the home office, the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli said it was “continuously assessing the security situation” in Libya by watching the Al Jazeera, the Dubai-based Arab cable TV network.

Rapid response

The embassy, using text messages and posting announcements on the Internet, also said it “continues to enjoin Filipinos in Libya not to go out into the streets but to stay in their homes and workplaces and wait for advice.”

The Philippine “rapid response team” will await evacuees if and when they show up at the border crossing in Djerba, Tunisia, said spokesperson Raul Hernandez.

The foreign office continues to maintain the following hotlines for families of Filipinos who are still in Libya: 834-3240, 834-3245 and 834-3333.

More than 26,000 Filipinos were in Libya before violence broke out. The foreign office said that it had evacuated 9,000 of them with help from IOM and another 4,000 were repatriated by their employers but that it was clueless on what happened to the rest, apart from some 1,700 nurses and hospital workers still in hospitals.

Many OFWs have refused to return home for lack of employment opportunities in the Philippines.

Aggressively reaching out

Referring to the situation in Syria, Conejos said a “special group” of embassy staff was “aggressively reaching out to OFWs” using text messages and the Internet in a bid to encourage them to repatriate.

He said that $500,000 had been sent by Manila to Damascus for the repatriation effort for some 17,000 Filipino workers, mostly women working as domestic helpers amid increasingly tense antigovernment protests. Around 90 percent of the workers are undocumented.

So far, 190 Filipinos in Syria have requested assistance for evacuation, Conejos said. With reports from Jerry E. Esplanada and Philip C. Tubeza