House ready to augment OFW repatriation funds — Defensor

The House of Representatives is ready to augment funds for the repatriation of more than 100,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) still stranded in their host countries.

“We can include the augmentation in the proposed Bayanihan 2 or We Recover as One law, which we hope to approve together with the Senate after we open our second regular session on Monday,” Anakalusugan party-list Rep. Mike Defensor said Friday.

Defensor, chair of the House committee on public accounts, has conducted two hearings on the repatriation of OFWs who have been stranded abroad since the lockdown in March.

“We have to get all of our workers who have been rendered jobless by the Covid-19 pandemic home to be with their loved ones. We can appropriate in Bayanihan 2 additional funds for their repatriation and reintegration once they are here,” he said.

During a hearing last week, Department of Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Sarah Arriola informed the panel that the DFA has used up about P770 million of its P1-billion assistance to nationals fund for the return of stranded OFWs.

She said the remaining P230 million would be exhausted by next month. She said one charter flight costs between P12 million and P13 million.

Arriola added that DFA Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. plans to divert his department’s P1-billion building retrofitting budget to its repatriation fund.

She said there were 107,000 OFWs still to be repatriated.

Defensor said more than 50 charter and commercial flights have brought in tens of thousands of OFWs since Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano and his committee appealed for the government’s task force on Covid-19 response to allow more inbound planes transporting stranded workers.

“The DFA has promised to fly in an additional 50,000 OFWs this month, while other agencies, including the Department of Labor and Employment and the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration, are prepared to receive, process and help them, given them aid and get them to their families,” he said.

He said those awaiting repatriation include about 5,000 in the United Arab Emirates and another 5,000 in Qatar who have already bought tickets on commercial flights on their own.

Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)