Sunday, 2025-01-26, 1:33 PM
Welcome Guest | RSS
My site
Main | Filipinos to leave Libya by land, sea, air - Forum | Registration | Login
[ New messages · Members · Forum rules · Search · RSS ]
  • Page 1 of 1
  • 1
Filipinos to leave Libya by land, sea, air
MagicMan13Date: Saturday, 2011-02-26, 4:41 AM | Message # 1
Generalissimo
Group: Administrators
Messages: 2452
Reputation: 0
Status: Offline
MANILA, Philippines—Acting Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said shipping arrangements had been made and alternative land routes established to get most of the Filipinos out of Libya, as tensions continued to escalate.

The Department of Foreign Affairs said it was arranging for ferry ships to take the Filipinos from Tripoli to Malta as well as those from Benghazi to Crete in Greece, and setting up an outpost on the border of Tunisia.

The government also said on Friday that about 13,000 overseas Filipino workers caught in the Libyan conflict would be brought out of that country through the efforts of their employers, though it gave no timetable.

A six-member team sent by the DFA to oversee the repatriation of the Filipinos arrived Friday in Tripoli.

The team, led by Executive Director Ricardo Endaya of the DFA Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs, was to split up into groups with one going to Benghazi and another to neighboring Tunisia, where they will receive Filipinos crossing the border.

Also Friday, Vice President Jejomar Binay left for the Middle East on a week-long mission that his camp said might give him a chance to negotiate for the safe passage of Filipinos in the troubled region.

Binay will meet high officials in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates for talks on a “labor agreement that aims to improve the conditions of Filipino workers.”

“If needed, he might go to other countries to negotiate for the safe passage of Filipinos” from strife-torn places, his spokesperson Joey Salgado said.

As of Friday, Del Rosario said 204 Filipinos were out of Libya and were expected to return to the Philippines at any time under the government’s voluntary repatriation program.

Philippine Airlines (PAL) said it was ready to mount emergency flights to evacuate Filipinos fleeing Libya.

PAL president and COO Jaime Bautista said the flag carrier was just waiting for final instructions from the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) regarding the exact pick-up point where PAL would fetch the Filipinos.

“Our planes can fly to Tunisia or Cairo from Riyadh. We can also mount direct charter flights to other safe pick-up points near Libya to be determined by the DFA,” Bautista said.

Matter of semantics

Del Rosario said: “In view of the escalating violence and widespread insecurity in Libya, the department is on a full relocation and repatriation mode.” He said the government had advised Filipinos to head to designated points.

“Our objective is to do this as quickly as possible. The (government) is committed to ensuring the safety and welfare of our beloved Filipinos in Libya.”

Del Rosario said the government was not using the word “evacuation” to refer to its effort to get the Filipinos out of Libya, preferring to more accurately describe it as “relocation and repatriation.”

“It’s only a question of semantics,” he told reporters.

The statement said the government estimated 13,000 Filipinos would be taken out of the country under the evacuation program.

The government estimates there are 26,000 Filipinos working in Libya.

The DFA said a Filipino working in Libya, engineer Benjur Urusugan, of Tuguegarao, had returned to Manila while 12 others had crossed the Egyptian border under arrangements with their employers.

About 1,000 Filipinos working for Waha Oil Company (WOC), Libya’s second biggest oil drilling firm, are stranded in the middle of the Sahara desert, running out of food and water and are desperate to be rescued, according to relatives and friends of some of the workers.

A wife of one of the Filipino engineers at the facility said the Filipinos were unable to contact their main office in Tripoli and the Philippine embassy in the Libyan capital.

“They are willing to be brought back to the Philippines. However, they are afraid to venture out of their camp in the desert because they may encounter violent groups on their way (to Benghazi, the nearest city),” the wife said, asking not to be identified because she feared her story might antagonize the authorities.

Two other e-mails from relatives of the workers spoke of the same difficulties facing the stranded OFWs.

Manila-based labor rights monitor Migrante International puts the actual number of Filipinos in Libya at closer to 36,000.

Migrante president Garry Martinez, who has been critical of the government’s evacuation efforts, said the latest announcement had not changed anything on the ground.

He said it was too dangerous for the stranded Filipinos to travel to the assembly points from where they were supposed to catch the boats.

DJ Yap, Phil. Daily Inquirer

 
  • Page 1 of 1
  • 1
Search:

Copyright MyCorp © 2025

Free web hostinguCoz