Gov’t still mulling whether to lift Iraq OFW ban

Filipinos seeking employment in Iraq may have to wait a little longer as the government has yet to decide whether to lift the ban on deploying workers to the war-torn country, special envoy retired Gen. Roy Cimatu said Thursday.

"We are still finalizing our recommendations. Nothing’s concrete yet," Cimatu, who heads the Middle East Crisis Management Committee, said shortly after he paid tribute to the 96-strong Philippine humanitarian contingent to Iraq at Camp Aguinaldo.

There are currently 4,200 Filipinos working in Iraq, according to Cimatu. He added that they are relatively safe since all of them work mainly inside military bases run by the United States.

He said the government is looking into several concerns, one of which is the apparent change in the strategy employed by Iraqi militants, who have targeted Christian churches for bomb attacks.

Cimatu said while suicide bombings in Iraq have subsided, the government is alarmed over the bombing of Christian churches.

"There is a religious fervor and this is quite disturbing," he said.

Cimatu admitted that he did not anticipate this new development, which he said will have some bearing in the government’s decision to lift the ban on deploying workers to Iraq.

Filipino workers remain in demand in Iraq. Most Arab employers who want to employ Filipinos are based in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Earlier this week, Philippine Overseas Employment Administration chief Rosalinda Baldoz said there are about 6,100 unfilled job orders for Iraq as of this time, noting that the Philippines received the job orders long before the government imposed the current ban.

The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) first banned the deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to Iraq when a Filipino driver was killed in an ambush last April.

The ban was lifted last July 1 but President Arroyo ordered its immediate reimposition after Iraqi insurgents kidnapped truck driver Angelo de la Cruz and threatened to behead him unless the Philippines withdrew its humanitarian contingent from Iraq.

The 6,000 job vacancies translate to some $102.48 million in wages the workers would have sent home, Baldoz added.

Local recruitment agencies earlier claimed the Philippines is losing at least $1.4 million in monthly income for Filipino workers because of the deployment ban on Iraq.

They added that foreign employers are now recruiting workers from India and Nepal to fill up positions previously intended for Filipinos.

To prevent Filipino workers from missing more employment opportunities, local recruiters said they plan to file a petition asking the Department of Foreign Affairs and DOLE to immediately lift the deployment ban.

But Labor Undersecretary Danilo Cruz said DOLE will wait for Cimatu’s recommendation to decide whether they will lift the ban soon.

"We will not base our decision on possible income or remittance of OFWs because more than the earnings, DOLE is concerned with the security and safety of Filipino workers," he said.

President Arroyo, in her annual state of the nation address last July 26, vowed to protect the interests of the country’s estimated eight million overseas workers, 1.5 million of whom are in the Middle East.

She promised to generate up to 10 million jobs over the next six years to keep Filipinos at home, even as she acknowledged that their remittances were a huge boost to the economy.