Fourth government-chartered flight brings home 343 OFWs, kin from Middle East
President Marcos on Monday personally welcomed 343 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and their relatives from the Middle East who returned to the Philippines on a flight chartered by the government.
The repatriates arrived at Villamor Air Base in Pasay City past 6 a.m. They boarded the flight—the fourth to be contracted by the government to fly home Filipinos escaping from the conflict in the Middle East—in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Not all of them, however, were from Saudi Arabia as some came from Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, according to Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Leo Cacdac.
He said that the OFWs would receive financial assistance and also be provided with “reintegration program services such as livelihood, capital and employment facilitation.”
Cacdac added that preparations are ongoing for two more chartered flights for Filipinos in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), meanwhile, reported that as of 2 p.m. Monday, Philippine foreign service posts in the Middle East had assisted in the repatriation of 613 Filipinos.
The Philippine Consulate General (PCG) in Dubai, UAE, posted the highest number of Filipinos who sought help at 189; followed by the Philippine Embassy in Doha, Qatar, with 144; and the Philippine Embassy in Amman, Jordan, with 115.
More pending requests
Another 75 were repatriated through the Abu Dhabi Embassy in UAE; 43 from Tel-Aviv, Israel; 23 from Tehran, Iran; 20 from Baghdad, Iraq; and four from Manama, Bahrain.
The DFA has so far received a total of 1,262 repatriation requests, with 649 still pending.
Most requests, according to DFA records, were received by the Dubai PCG, with 556, of which 367 are still being processed.
Other foreign posts with pending requests include Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, with 83 and Beirut, Lebanon, with two.
On the other hand, Philippine embassies that have not received any repatriation requests are those in Damascus, Syria, and Muscat, Oman.
Along with the DFA, the Department of Migrant Workers and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration have been working to repatriate distressed Filipinos in the Middle East after Iran launched retaliatory strikes against Israel as well as American bases in the region after the US-Israeli attack on Tehran on Feb. 28.
The DFA said that based on its February records, there were around 2.4 million Filipinos in the Middle East.
