Stranded

The worse thing that can happen to anybody other than getting sick abroad is to get stranded with pocket money dwindling fast. When this Wuhan corona virus closed much of the world down, thousands of people found themselves stranded and needing help.

The immediate impulse is to run to your country’s embassy for help. But when there is a multitude needing help, the resources of any embassy can be easily exhausted.

That happened here. A considerable number of foreign tourists were still busy having more fun in the Philippines when countries started to shut down airports and airlines started cancelling flights. It is easy to panic.

The Wuhan virus eventually placed our tourism industry in a state of induced coma. But before that happened, its stakeholders did all they can to make our claims of Filipino hospitality come alive. We quickly organized to help the foreign tourists stranded in our islands.

Many tourists sought help from their embassies. Sometimes their embassies would help them, but sometimes they are on their own.

But because they were in the Philippines, they were never left to fix their problems by themselves. The Department of Tourism and the Tourism Congress of the Philippines (TCP) together with our local airlines and even the Philippine Air Force (PAF) went out of their way to help them.

I was telling Tourism Secretary Berna Romulo Puyat that putting the resources of her department to help stranded foreign tourists get back home is a gem of an idea. It is better than a thousand television spots. It generates tremendous goodwill that will pay off when better times return.

The stranded tourists will not only feel good enough to want to come back, their word of mouth accounts of how they were helped will encourage others to come as well. Hospitality is not just an advertising claim for the Philippines, but also a proven way of life.

The tourism department staged 20 sweeper flights and assisted other flights from March 19 to 27 to ferry stranded tourists from Boracay, Iloilo, Siargao, Palawan, Davao, Tacloban, Cagayan de Oro, Bacolod, General Santos, and Zamboanga to Manila, Clark and Cebu. As of April 8, some 19,190 tourists have been assisted to move to our international gateways Manila, Clark, and Cebu.

For its sweeper flights, DOT worked with commercial airlines Philippine Airine (PAL), Cebu Pacific, Air Swift, and Royal Air Philippines. The DOT also worked with the PAF, Philippine Coast Guard, all airport and related authorities and with DOTr for all necessary land, air, and sea permits.

PAL had undertaken special flights to North America and London to bring stranded foreign tourists home. The return flight through home stranded Filipino travelers.

Hotels also helped accommodate the stranded tourists while they waited for their flights. Foreign embassies were effusive in their thanks for the assistance our government gave their nationals.

The flipside has to do with our nationals stranded abroad. Most of them are overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), particularly crew members of cruise ships that have been forced to stop voyages because of the Wuhan virus.

For this mission, the Department of Foreign Affairs was very much on the job. Foreign Secretary Teddyboy Locsin was emotional in his tweets to get other agencies in government to help welcome our new heroes back home.

The latest data I saw showed that some 13,000 OFWs were repatriated from all over the world. DFA numbers show majority of Filipinos repatriated were seafarers. This is not surprising because the Philippines supplies the largest share of labor on cargo and cruise ships across the globe.

Aside from the seafarers, more than 3,000 land-based Filipino workers have returned to the Philippines since early February. As economies in their host countries suffer in the face of lockdowns, OFWs are sent home. In the week of April 6 alone, over 1,000 OFWs arrived home from Qatar, Kuwait, Japan and Indonesia.

The DFA was assisted by the tourism department in getting hotel accommodations for the returning heroes. That was not always easy. Hotels and the residents in the vicinity of the hotels were reluctant to welcome the OFWs out of fear the virus will contaminate their community.

The protocol calls for all returning Filipinos to undergo 14-day quarantines, supervised by the Bureau of Quarantine.

During their quarantine, OFWs are confined to their assigned single-occupancy, fully-furnished rooms, complete with sanitation and hygiene kits until the day of their discharge as cleared by authorized DOH Bureau of Quarantine personnel.

Secretary Puyat, who rallied the support of the private sector in this initiative said, “The overwhelming show of support of the hotel sector to our government’s call to make their rooms available to OFWs should somehow ease their anxiety, having to wait for another two weeks till they eventually reunite with their families.”

Secretary Puyat added that at least 209 hotels have participated to date, 160 of which are in Metro Manila and which have accommodated some 5,289 OFWs.

The DOT chief remarked that at least 49 of the hotels with 3,343 rooms available are located outside Metro Manila, including those in regions 1, 2, 3, 4A, 7, 8, and 11, where those OFWs may be billeted near their home destinations.

It will be weeks or maybe months if not years before our tourism sector can get back to where it was before the virus struck. But the goodwill we showed in those very trying days will likely pay back when the world gets back to business.

Secretaries Locsin and Puyat showed leadership expected of Cabinet members. And the local industries under their areas of concern showed readiness to cooperate at the time of great need. Jojo Clemente of the TCP helped get the private sector working with government on both concerns.

No virus can beat the Filipino spirit… not this one or anything else like it in the future. Crisis only makes us shine as a people specially when leadership inspires us and shows us how.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco