Worker ban stays in Iraq, Afghanistan

THE deployment of Filipino workers to Iraq and Afghanistan will stay but will exclude those employed in the US military bases in those countries, Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. said Sunday.

The Aquino administration reached the decision after Washington’s Central Command ordered all contractors last year not to hire third-country nationals whose domestic laws prohibited their citizens from traveling and working in Iraq and Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said.

That ruling would allow some 7,000 Filipino workers in Iraq and Afghanistan to keep their jobs, he said.

“The deployment ban to Afghanistan and Iraq stays, but the Filipinos currently employed in military bases and facilities of the United States are excluded and will be allowed to continue working in those countries,” Ochoa said.

But no new workers would be allowed to travel to those countries for work, he said.

The deployment ban in Iraq has been in place since 2004. A similar restriction on Filipinos wanting to enter Afghanistan was put in place in 2007.

Meanwhile, the Interior Department on Sunday urged village chairmen to help identify and locate the 17,000 Filipinos working in war-torn Syria so they could be sent home.

In Geneva, The Associated Press quoted the International Organization for Migration as saying a large ferry docked in Tripoli’s harbor would depart the Libyan capital Sunday or Monday carrying at least 1,000 stranded foreigners.

A first ship left the city for Benghazi and then Egypt late Thursday carrying 263 foreigners from 15 countries including Egypt, the Philippines and the United States, the group said. –Joyce Pangco Pañares and Rio N. Araja, Manila Standard Today