Government quota keeps 14 OFWs stranded in Amsterdam airport — labor group

MANILA, Philippines — A labor group on Tuesday said 14 Overseas Filipino Workers are stranded in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport after they were denied return to the country by the government.

"Philippine authorities refused to allow them to fly back to Manila on the pretext that 'it already reached its quota'... [President Rodrigo] Duterte’s task force officials have recently restricted the entry quota of returning OFWs to 1,000 to 1,500 per day depending on the availability of quarantine facilities," the group said in a statement.

Migrante International said one of the OFWs is a domestic worker while the rest are seafarers who were working in Curacao.

A June 5 report on state-run Philippine News Agency quotes Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Sarah Lou Arriola as saying "the quota (for Overseas Filipino arrivals) will increase to 1,200 each day, so there will be more repatriates."

Despite the alleged daily quota relayed by officials, the Department of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday announced that a total of 2,281 OFWs returned to the Philippines on Monday.

The department said the workers were from Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Barbados, Germany and the Netherlands.

Furthermore, DFA said all of the returning repatriates on Monday went through COVID-19 testing upon arrival, save for workers from Barbados whose manning agency arranged for them to be tested beforehand.

Treatment of repatriated OFWs

Migrante International also slammed the Duterte administration for its poor treatment of repatriated OFWs.

The Department of Labor and Employment in April announced that they would be providing financial assistance of P10,000 to returning OFWs "whose employments were affected by the COVID-19 global pandemic" through the Abot Kamay ang Pagtulong (AKAP) cash aid program.

However, the labor group said that most of repatriated OFWs have not received the financial amelioration that the government promised.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello said that as of June 14, the number of displaced OFWs who have applied for cash assistance under the DOLE’s AKAP program has reached 508,527.

Of the total number of applicants, he said DOLE has so far extended assistance to 189,153 OFWs.

Migrante International also called out the labor department program for excluding OFWs from more than a hundred countries.

"There were only 29 countries listed under Department Order No. 212 where OFWs can apply for cash assistance. It is no wonder that OFWs from countries outside of the Duterte government’s priority list feel forsaken and isolated," the group said in a statement issued early this month.

They added that over a hundred OFWs on June 4 were stranded in NAIA and had to spend the night lying down on the walkways outside the airport as they waited for flights back to their provinces.

The DFA on Tuesday announced a total of 6021 cases of COVID-19 among Filipinos abroad and a death toll of 442.