1,200 Filipinos sail to safety on luxury ship

MANILA, Philippines—The first sea rescue organized by the Philippine government for Filipinos in violence-torn Libya has left the port of Benghazi aboard a chartered luxury liner with 1,200 Filipinos aboard traveling in style, officials said.

Overland, at the Tunisia border, Filipinos joined tens of thousands of foreign workers scrambling to flee in appalling conditions. One Filipino who arrived in Manila Wednesday described the situation at the Libya-Tunisia crossing as “inhuman.”

The UN refugee agency and the International Organization for Migration have appealed for aid to deal with a “humanitarian crisis” at the Ras Adjir border in Tunisia where some 40,000 workers from various countries had converged from the besieged Libyan capital of Tripoli.

“We can see acres of people waiting to cross the border. Many have been waiting for three to four days in the freezing cold, with no shelter or food,” said UN worker Ayman Gharaibeh. “This seems to be getting worse by the day.”

The Ionian Queen chartered by the Philippine government departed at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday (2:30 a.m. Wednesday Manila time) with 1,200 Filipino evacuees bound for the Greek island of Crete, or around 500 less than its intended number of passengers, said Department of Labor and Employment spokesperson Nicon Fameronag.

Those who remained were mostly medical workers from the eastern Libyan town of Ajdabiya. “Maybe they saw that it was safe for them and so they decided to stay,” Fameronag said.

A statement issued by Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario Wednesday said that “conditions have somewhat normalized in Benghazi,” which has fallen under rebel control. “Banks and shops have opened and police are back in the streets.”

Fameronag said hundreds of Filipinos continued to slip out of Libya overland through its borders with Egypt and Tunisia.

“The ferry boarding was orderly. Mothers with children boarded first, followed by some passengers who were sick,” Fameronag said.

“It’s a luxury ferry and the food was free. They’re sailing to Heraklion in Crete, where Philippine Embassy and labor officials are going to take care of them, including their accommodation and food,” he said.

“From there, they will go to Athens from where they will be booked for various flights home,” he added.

DFA slammed

At a hearing Wednesday of the House committee on overseas workers affairs, Zambales Rep. Milagros Magsaysay lamented that 20,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) trapped in Libya were “practically on their own.”

Magsaysay said that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) had no concrete plan for the evacuation of the OFWs. She said most of the Filipinos who were able to leave Libya escaped with the help of their employers and not the government.

“The DFA has done a miserable job in the Libya crisis. They should have been the first to act on the crisis before it became too late. They were lacking in urgency and foresight in handling the Middle East turmoil. I did not know that we had a Philippine Ambassador to Libya (Alejandrino Vicente) until the situation had gone out of hand,” Magsaysay said.

She said members of the committee had attempted to contact the DFA phone lines supposedly dedicated for stranded OFWs in Libya but could not get through because the lines were busy.

Magsaysay urged the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) to allocate P500 million out of its funds for the use of OFWs in Libya and other countries in turmoil.

“The OWWA should set up this fund even without the approval of the President. This money came from the $25 contribution of each OFW and one of the uses of this fund is for their evacuation from countries in turmoil,” Magsaysay said.

Glitch operational

Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said in a statement Wednesday that operational issues, not funding, was the problem.

“These operational issues are largely due to the emergency nature of the activity and the difficulty and uncertainty of operations due to risks to life and limb, as well as the difficulty of access. This is the bigger problem that government faces, not funding,” Abad said.

He said that the main source of repatriation expenses was the P13-billion Overseas Filipino Workers Trust Fund handled by the OWWA which had released P100 million for the Libya emergency.

In addition, Abad said that the DFA had at the “minimum,” an available balance of P138.7 million from the Assistance to Nationals fund and at the “maximum” it can use P187.8 million, which he described as the balance of the lump-sum fund for the implementation of the Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos’ Act of 2009.

President satisfied

Palace deputy spokesperson Abigail Valte said that President Benigno Aquino III was satisfied with the way the DFA was handling the evacuation and repatriation of Filipino workers in Libya.

“The President sees the efforts made by the DFA and acting Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario,” Valte said, noting that people appreciated the trip of the 71-year-old diplomat to Libya over the objections of his family on Friday to lead the evacuation and repatriation of 450 workers there.

DFA spokesperson Eduardo Malaya Wednesday said 9,231 Filipinos had fled Libya and that the department assisted all of them “one way or another”—providing food and water, travel papers and making flight arrangements. Since violence erupted in Libya in mid-February, 859 of them have arrived in Manila, but he conceded that most of them were repatriated by their employers.

In contrast, China has evacuated 30,000 Chinese workers over the past several weeks from Libya.

Employers to return 13,000

Briefing reporters on other evacuations in Libya overland, Fameronag said around 500 Filipinos from Tobruk crossed the Egyptian border going to Alexandria.

“They will be met by consular officials if they need travel documents. The consular fees have been waived,” he said.

In the west, 1,241 Filipinos sheltered in Tripoli crossed the Tunisian border in a convoy of buses going to Djerba. He said another group of 230 had arrived in Tripoli and requested shelter and repatriation.

“There are an estimated 26,000 OFWs in Libya and 13,011 of them are supposed to be repatriated by their employers. (The government) will take care of the balance,” Fameronag said.

Some companies have asked the Philippines for help to return the Filipinos, but others have simply abandoned the workers, he said.

Fameronag said in Nalut near the Tunisian border, 19 Filipinos had requested government aid through Migrante International.

“It looked like they were abandoned by their employers. They wrote the President saying that they were very disappointed (with the lack of government assistance) but the (DFA) was able to send a team and brought them over the border to Tunisia,” Fameronag said.

Labor Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz on Monday said that those who failed to repatriate their workers would be asked to refund the government for the cost of evacuating their employees. With reports from Gil C. Cabacungan Jr., Christine O. Avendaño, DJ Yap, Norman Bordadora and Jerry E. Esplanada