OFWs in Kurdistan want deployment ban in Iraq lifted

MANILA, Philippines — Hundreds of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Special Administrative Region of Kurdistan, a northern province in Iraq, have appealed to the Philippine embassy in Baghdad to recommend the lifting of the deployment ban imposed by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration on Jan. 10.

In a letter signed and addressed to the Philippine embassy in Baghdad, Annie Marie Saucelo, representing the Samahang Manggagawa ng Kurdistan, expressed the sentiments of the Filipino community in Kurdistan, which asked the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to lift the deployment ban.

Officials at the Philippine embassy have forwarded Saucelo’s urgent request to the DFA-Manila, but there has been no reply so far.

Many OFWs in Kurdistan were vacationing in Manila when the government imposed the deployment ban as violent rallies were staged in Baghdad against the United States embassy.

It has been over a month since the Duterte administration, led by Environment Secretary Roy Cimatu, mounted a massive repatriation effort to extricate Filipinos from Iraq to Doha, Qatar with a Rapid Response Team (RRT) that flew to Iraq to convince Filipinos to come home.

Despite persistent efforts of Cimatu’s team, only 30 OFWs, mostly domestic helpers illegally recruited to Baghdad, heeded the call to return to Manila.

Two Navy ships were also dispatched to the Middle East to ferry the expected huge number of Filipinos in Iraq. 

Data from the Department of Labor and Employment showed that there are 2,191 OFWs in Iraq, while records from the DFA counted 4,204 Filipinos in the Middle Eastern country as of June last year.

More than 2,000 Filipinos working in US bases refused repatriation and another 1,500 working in Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, also turned down the RRT.

The Filipinos now stranded in Manila are requesting to return to Kurdistan to save their jobs while some others now in that country want to come home for family reunions with graduation rites coming up in March.

There is no more reason to keep the deployment ban in Iraq, according to recruitment consultant and migration expert Emmanuel Geslani.

The violence over the US-Iran conflict, which spilled over to Baghdad, has gone down and Kurdistan has always been “violence free,” as it is in the northern part of the country, located hundreds of miles away from the capital Baghdad, Geslani said.