WE ARE shocked by the images of thousands of Arab refugees crossing borders towards Europe as they try to escape conflict in their war-torn nations in the Middle East. Yet, we are not aware that thousands of our own compatriots are enduring similar conditions for years in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
There are now eleven thousand Filipinos stranded in the city living in makeshift shelters beside the Philippine consulate. Over the past several years, the plummeting oil prices have caused the closure of many Saudi construction companies where these OFWs work. Their number in these shelters were pegged at about one thousand five hundred in 2013, but the continuing crisis in the oil sector caused the ballooning of these figures to these scandalous number three years later. Without income and pushed by the need to survive, some of them have turned to the trash of supermarket chains, salvaging discarded items that can still be cooked and eaten for food.
It is a complex situation since many of them have not been paid their back salaries nor do they have exit visas after the closure of their companies. This is compounded by the refusal of many of these workers to go home to the country hoping that new opportunities will open up for them in the oil-rich nation. There are debts and a family to feed and support back home.
This set of factors certainly add up to create what has become our very own secret refugee crisis. Pushed by the absence of opportunities at home, generations upon generations of our compatriots have looked towards the Middle East for well-paying jobs. The problem is when the same global economic crisis which they tried to escape back home catch up with them overseas.
The dire predicament of our gallant OFWs abroad when they face wholesale retrenchment such as this, or survival in war-torn places elsewhere, among other hazards of working in foreign shores, are clear indictments to the labor export policy put in place by government ever since. Families are broken up for much needed foreign remittances that help shore up the fiscal reserves of our bankrupt governments.
There is clear culpability on the part of government for being the primary enabler of the export of warm Filipino bodies abroad. But it is the callous and heartless regard for the desperate plight of our compatriots in these dire situations that is really scandalous and angering. What has the DFA or the OWWA done to provide a solution for the Filipino workers’ condition whose number now run into eleven thousand just outside our consulate in Jeddah for the past years?
Proving that a compassionate stance towards the plight of Filipino overseas workers and an impassioned political will can usher in the winds of change, it took the ascendancy of the Duterte administration before a tangible response by our government to this crisis was finally forthcoming. One of the first official tasks of the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) under Secretary Silvestre Bello by the newly-elected president was for the secretary to travel to Jeddah and see what government can do for the plight of the thousands of stranded overseas workers.
The following weeks saw the return of our stranded Filipinos compatriots to the country in batches. The president has given them the funds for their airfare and repatriation with promises of government support for their livelihood upon their arrival. This week, he welcomed 128 of them at the airport in an unprecedented gesture of respect and support for the plight of our OFWs. In his speech, he displayed an acute understanding of the root cause of the problem which he promised to address by building and generating jobs here in our country. He also promised to see what he could for the plight of Mary Jane Veloso who remains in death row in Indonesia for drug-trafficking.
It was, once again, a propaganda coup consistent with the Duterte brand. The number of instances of these dramatic and heart-warming events has now occurred with such regularity that one begins to wonder if what we are seeing is really the genuine thing. Whether true or not, the tangible efforts undertaken by the new administration for this long-suffering and neglected sector of our people is definitely welcome and refreshing.
For those familiar with the struggle of our OFW compatriots, it was an emotional moment to finally see the country’s leadership accord our new heroes with the care and respect they deserve. We may have serious differences with him on a host of issues, but for these developments in the OFW sector as well as the progressing peace negotiations, Duterte deserves our support.
