News item: Thousands of OFWs still stranded
Two days to the deadline and there are still between 10-12 thousand undocumented Filipino migrant workers still waiting to be repatriated in Saudi Arabia. Why? The problem is almost half a year now and only a handful of these victims of Saudi crackdown were returned home. This snail-paced process being utilized by the DFA is fatal to the undocumented Filipino migrant workers.
Despite the DFA's repeated announcements that the government intends to repatriate as many Filipinos as possible before the deadline lapses, only about 600 has been flown home
According to DFA Spokesperson Raul Hernandez, the Philippine government is awaiting a reply from the Kingdom regarding a possible extension of the grace period.
“We have sought for an extension of the grace period to enable us to repatriate or regularize all our OFWs in Saudi Arabia. We have yet to receive a reply from the Saudi government,” he said.
According to him, not only time constraints (because of the nearing deadline) but also “limitations” of the processing capabilities of the Saudi government are hindering the quick repatriation of foreign workers.
The problems notwithstanding, Hernandez said the number of OFW repatriates in-waiting may not be as large as 10,000.
“Since the beginning of this issue of the crackdown, about 10,000 have signified to be repatriated to the Philippines. But last May 10, a new guideline was issued by the Saudi government allowing the facility of also regularizing the papers of those who would like to continue working in Saudi Arabia.
‘So we surmise that those who originally signified to be repatriated, some of them have decided to regularize or legalize their stay in SA,” the DFA official said.
Surmises will not help solve the emergency. Again, the wait and see tactics is the cause of more problems popping out than solving the original problem, and the migrant workers are paying for all these delays.
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