President Rodrigo Duterte has promised overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) that they will not wait long to get government assistance to return to the Philippines if they want to.
According to the President, it is painful for him to lose their jobs abroad during this pandemic, run out of money, and have nothing to take home to their families.
“So kung sino talaga iyong mga Pilipino na gusto umuwi, we will do everything to expedite the return to the country, which is the Philippines,” Duterte said.
“Mahal ko kayo, kung hindi ka mahal sa kanila, then I love you all and come back to our country and ano tayo kung ano magawa natin para sa inyo.”
Meanwhile, Senator Christopher “Bong” Go, present at the IATF meeting in Malacañang, suggested that seafarers should be given priority in specific vaccines if possible.
Go said this when discussing the limited supply of Pfizer vaccines to be distributed nationwide.
But the President did not seem to agree and said that another program may be needed for the vaccination of seafarers.
Duterte vows faster repatriation of OFWs
“I like to go along with them. But when you begin to distribute iyang mga bakuna at pipiliin mo ang tao, this is not really a matter of where you are going,” said Duterte.
“Sabihin ng tao hindi namin problema iyan kung pupunta sila sa ano. So that has to have a separate program.”
Meanwhile, based on a United Nations migration agency study, 8 out of 10 Filipino migrant workers who return to the Philippines remain unemployed.
In the report “COVID-19 Impact Assessment on Returned Overseas Filipino Workers” by the International Organization for Migration, more than 8,000 OFWs interviewed by the agency between September and December 2020 are still looking for work 3 months after returning home.
Based on the results of the 2019 Survey on Overseas Filipinos, the number of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) who worked abroad at any time during the period April to September 2019 was estimated at 2.2 million.
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