Government studying stricter travel restrictions

MANILA, Philippines, January 5 ------ With the looming shortage of quarantine facilities, the government is considering barring the entry of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) coming from countries with confirmed cases of the new COVID-19 variant. “It’s a possibility that restriction will also apply to OFWs, considering that the new COVID variant is highly infectious,” Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said at a virtual briefing yesterday.

Bello noted that the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) is also worried about the shortage of quarantine facilities for OFWs. “I just had a meeting with OWWA administrator Hans Cacdac and he is apprehensive that we’ve run out of quarantine because we are repatriating at least 1,000 to a maximum of 3,500 OFWs a day,” Bello disclosed. Bello said OWWA is mandated to also provide quarantine facilities for vacationing OFWs coming from countries with new COVID variant.

The government has exempted OFWs from the restriction on travelers coming from countries with the new SARS-CoV-2 strain. However, they are required to undergo a 14-day quarantine. The labor chief said the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) is now studying the possible inclusion of OFWs in the new restriction. Any decision of the IATF will be submitted to President Duterte for approval. He said the IATF is likely to recommend the inclusion of OFWs if the new COVID-19 strain affects any of them. But Bello stressed there is no report so far of OFWs catching the new COVID-19 strain.

“We have a specific number of OFWs contaminated by COVID-19 but we don’t have the number of Filipino overseas workers who were contaminated with the COVID variant,” he said. Based on DOLE data, over 11,000 OFWs have been infected with COVID. Most have recovered, but 876 have died from the illness.

Stranded OFWs

Bello also said over 50,000 displaced OFWs are stranded abroad. “We could have brought them home but some countries imposed lockdown like Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia so there’s no plane even if we are ready to repatriate them,” he said. Since the onset of the pandemic, Bello said the Philippine government has repatriated 396,000 of the over 526, 000 displaced OFWs. He said some OFWs refused to be repatriated.

“Especially in Europe, OFWs opted to stay to enjoy the unemployment insurance given to displaced workers for a year. They are waiting for the situation to improve, in the meantime they are earning from the unemployment insurance,” Bello pointed out. The Department of Foreign Affairs said a total 327,511 OFWs have been repatriated since the start of COVID-19 repatriation flights in 2020. The DFA mounted its first COVID-19 repatriation flight to Wuhan, China on Feb. 9 last year. According to the DFA, land-based repatriates make up 231,537 or 70.7 percent of the total, coming from at least 90 countries and territories around the world. The remaining 29.3 percent or 95,974 are seafarers from more than 150 cruise ships, oil tankers and other bulk vessels.

Source: philstar.com