10,000 Filipinos safe, sound, homebound
The DOLE’s Middle East Crisis Monitoring Center has identified 3,544 Filipinos who have already left Libya while 4,097 more are still inside waiting to be evacuated, Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said.
Baldoz said 1,546 Filipinos in Benghazi were expected to start boarding the chartered ferry Ionian Queen, which will bring them to Crete in Greece.
Some 26,000 to 30,000 Filipinos, mostly workers, were in Libya before the uprising against Moammar Gadhafi began on Feb. 17 in Benghazi, Libya’s second largest city.
Large parts of Libya have fallen to protesters but Tripoli and a few cities have remained under the control of Gadhafi’s forces.
“Reports collated by the DOLE Middle East Crisis Monitoring Center place the number of Filipinos already out of Libya at 3,544,” she said at a press conference.
“Arrangement for their onward transportation to the Philippines is in various stages,” she added.
As of 8 a.m. Tuesday, 440 Filipinos had already arrived in Manila with up to 172 more expected to arrive in seven flights up to Tuesday night. On Wednesday, 36 Filipinos are scheduled to arrive home.
“This excludes the 180 OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) whose arrival on board a MidEastern Airlines flight chartered by the government was delayed,” Baldoz said.
Tripoli airport closed
She said the airport in the Libyan capital was closed again so there was a delay.
The Philippine Embassy in Tripoli transported 534 workers to Djerba in Tunisia, but Manila has yet to receive the list of their names.
“We are negotiating (with foreign airlines for) chartered flights from Djerba and from Crete. Hopefully, the negotiations will be finalized today,” Baldoz said.
Chartered ferry
Baldoz said the ferry Ionian Queen was expected at the port of Gulani in Benghazi at around 2 p.m. Manila time and would take its passengers to Crete and then to Athens. The vessel can carry more than 1,720 passengers.
“We hope nothing will delay the boarding of all the passengers on that ship going to Crete, and then to Athens, and then back here in the Philippines,” she said.
The chartered ferry could be asked to make a second trip back to Banghazi if Filipino officials in Libya deemed it necessary, she added.
Staying put
Baldoz said there were still many Filipinos in Libya who had decided to stay put in the country.
“I know for a fact a nurse who had her husband return home while she decided to stay. We will just have to tell them there is this repatriation program but the matter of forcibly, bodily bringing them from residence, I don’t think that is fair,” Baldoz said.
“As long as [the situation] is clear to them, the freedom to decide is still with the individual,” Baldoz added.
Waiting for evacuation
At the Ghadames work site near the Libyan border with Tunisia, 109 Filipino workers have been waiting for evacuation, according to Migrante International.
“They asked to be fetched by Philippine officials but the [DFA officials] refuse to meet with them,” the group said in a statement.
It said that there were also 150 Filipinos from the Daewoo-Misurata Combine Cycle Project who “are still trapped in Misurata.”
“Their employer promised to evacuate them last week but they are still waiting as of this posting,” Migrante said.
Priest’s proposal rebuffed
The group also pointed out that Fr. Allan Arcebuche, of the San Francisco Catholic Church-Caritas in Tripoli, had suggested an alternative evacuation site that was relatively peaceful and more accessible.
“Arcebuche proposed that OFWs be evacuated also to a site in Sirte City where there is an airport and a seaport,” Migrante said.
“He said that the site is more accessible to OFWs from Jalo, Jufrah, Zellah Sebha and is also nearer Misurata, Sletin and Al Khoms than Tripoli and Benghazi,” it added.
The group said Arcebuche tried to forward his proposal to the Office of the Undersecretary for Overseas Workers Affairs-DFA but he was “met with hostility.”
Filipinos still lucky
For all the flak the Philippine government has gotten over its response to the Libyan crisis, there are some who count themselves lucky to be Filipino, like Nicomedes Cunanan, who returned home on Tuesday with several dozen others.
“We Filipinos are still fortunate because we have people taking care of our compatriots at the Egyptian border,” Cunanan said upon arriving at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport with 60 other Filipino workers who escaped the hostilities in Tripoli.
Unlike other nationalities, Filipinos who fled to the countries around Libya, such as Egypt and Tunisia, could turn to Philippine Embassy workers at border outposts for assistance, he said.
“[As for] other nationals like the Bangladeshis and Indians, nobody was helping them. They had to sleep out in the desert where it was so cold” at night, said Cunanan, a construction worker at Al Marj, a town about 700 kilometers from the capital, Tripoli.
Cunanan flew aboard Gulf Air Flight 154, one of seven flights carrying batches of Filipinos evacuated by either the Philippine government or, as in most of the cases, their own employers.
“The situation is bad at Al Marj,” Cunanan said. He recalled how the protesters against Gadhafi’s rule had set fire to several camps, particularly those owned by government.
Camped out at school
Nineteen of Cunanan’s fellow workers were able to escape but 33 others were left in Tripoli, at camps surrounded by protesters.
“Now they’re camped out at a school,” he said, as he urged the government to help rescue them.
But not everybody had faith in the Philippine government.
Henry Malit, a painter and sand blaster who worked in Wafa, a desert town about six hours from Tripoli, said he and 49 of his fellow workers were transported to the Algerian border by their employers on board two buses and a pickup truck.
Malit said his group had made calls to the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli at the height of the crisis, but was told to stay put until embassy personnel could reach them.
“In the end, we received no help from them. Our employers took care of everything,” Malit said.
Isla Ibarra said an unarmed Libyan national had escorted them to the Algerian border, taking care to avoid conflict areas.
“Fortunately, we never got close to the fighting,” he said.
Wife, sons left
But Ibarra said he now feared for his wife and two sons who were left behind, stranded at the Philippine Community School in Janzour, about 50 km away from Zawiya, one of the centers of conflict.
He said his wife Aida, who formerly worked as a staffer at the Philippine Embassy in Tripoli, told him by phone that the embassy had made arrangements to take them out on buses, but they were hampered by various delays.
“There are probably about 300 of them there in the school, mostly women and their children,” Ibarra said.
“My wife told me they’ve been subsisting on bread and water because supplies are quickly running out,” he added. With reports from Jerry E. Esplanada and Michelle V. Remo
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