40,000 displaced OFWs coming home

by Mayen Jaymalin, Rudy Santos, Michael Punongbayan, Jose Rodel Clapano (The Philippine Star), 7 May 2020

MANILA, Philippines — The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) reported yesterday that over 40,000 more overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) displaced by the lockdown abroad due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are expected to return home.

“More than 40,000 OFWs are to be repatriated. That might even be a conservative estimate because we have yet to include in the count medium- to long-term economic effect of the pandemic,” OWWA administrator Hans Leo Cacdac said in a radio interview.

Cacdac said that since the outbreak of COVID-19 about 45,000 seafarers and 40,000 land-based workers were affected by the pandemic and have been repatriated.

Of those repatriated, Cacdac said about 7,000 are still staying in quarantine facilities and waiting to be tested before they could finally be allowed to join their families.

“In the mass testing being conducted among OFWs, we are prioritizing those who have already completed their 14-day quarantine. Those who tested negative would be immediately sent home so we can decongest our quarantine facilities,” Cacdac said.

He said they expect the testing for OFWs to be completed this week.

“We really need to empty our quarantine facilities to accommodate those who are coming home,” he noted.

According to Cacdac, there are seafarers who are undergoing quarantine in their host ships. The seafarers will also be tested after 14 days and will temporarily stay in local hotels before going home.

Cacdac said the government is using the gold standard testing kit, thus local government units should not worry and must accept the OFWs when they return to their home provinces after testing negative for the virus.

The suspension of inbound flights has caused delay in the repatriation, but Cacdac said the number of affected workers is already declining.

Local recruitment industry officials previously projected about 100,000 OFWs could be displaced due to COVID.

Five more cruise ships are sailing to Manila Bay this week, bringing home more than 4,000 more Filipino seafarers.?Migration and recruitment expert Manny Geslani said the cruise ships Holland America Eurodam, Carnival Panorama and Royal Princess left the US west coast four weeks ago with 3,000 Filipino crewmembers, while two other ships Celebrity Solstice and Ovation of the Seas set sail from Singapore and India to bring home more than 1,000 OFWs.?

There are still 10 cruise ships in Manila Bay with more than 4,000 seafarers still undergoing 14-day quarantine as ordered by the Bureau of Quarantine and being monitored by the Philippine Coast Guard.?The Filipino seafarers are doing the self-quarantine inside the passenger cabins while the Department of Health and Bureau of Quarantine inspect each ship to check the temperature of each seafarer.

The COVID-19 tests are carried out on the passenger ships and those who test negative are allowed to disembark by the Coast Guard when the ship docks at the Port of Manila.

National Task Force on COVID-19 response chief implementer Carlito Galvez, Jr. said yesterday that by Friday the ban on incoming flights transporting OFWs from various foreign countries would be lifted.

“We will start accepting inbound passengers from abroad this coming Friday. But we will limit them to 400 to 500 (OFWs) to make it manageable,” Galvez said.

Galvez said the government decided to temporarily stop inbound international flights to decongest the quarantine facilities accommodating thousands of OFWs that have arrived from abroad.

“At present, we have more or less 23,480 OFWs quarantined in Metro Manila and in nearby Batangas. And it is our recommendation that was approved by the IATF (Inter-Agency Task Force) for us to have temporary restrictions. It is only for the inbound OFWs or incoming OFWs in our national airport. It was intended to regulate the entry of OFWs,” Galvez said.

Presidential yacht BRP Ang Pangulo, recently converted into a floating quarantine facility and currently docked at Pier 13 of Manila’s South Harbor, is now housing 16 suspected COVID-19 individuals.

Naval Public Affairs Office chief Lt. Commander Maria Christina Roxas said the suspected cases are all military frontliners and they are quarantined at the presidential yacht while waiting for the results of their RT-PCR test at the AFP General Hospital in Quezon City.

The Ang Pangulo has a medical staff of one doctor, a nurse, a hospital aide and three medical assistants. –