BY DOMINIQUE GABRIEL BAÑAGA AND MAE SINGUAY
BACOLOD City – Local authorities here and in Negros Occidental want to reimpose a moratorium on the travel of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) and locally stranded individuals (LSIs).
The recent repatriation of these overseas migrant workers and stranded residents overwhelmed hotels and inns in this capital city, according to Dr. Zeaphard Gerhart Caelian, head of the Provincial Incidence Management Team.
He noted that Negros Occidental already received 800 OFWs since the moratorium was lifted on Aug. 22.
The number is more than what the local hotels and inns can handle right now, Caelian pointed out.
“I have recommended to Gov. Eugenio Jose Lacson to ask for a moratorium on the return of OFWs because of the situation here,” Caelian said.
For his part, Mayor Evelio Leonardia submitted an urgent appeal to the national government’s Inter-Agency Task Force against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) to suspend the further repatriation of OFWs and LSIs to the city.
“We have also been informed that on Aug. 23, all the seven hospitals in Bacolod already refused to receive any more COVID patients, citing that they are already full. This is quite alarming,” Leonardia said.
He added that some hospitals may still have some available COVID-19 beds but the shortage of doctors and nurses forces patients to be refused admission.
“The situation in the hospitals has also worsened because their medical staff is starting to deplete. Many of them have been quarantined for having tested positive for the virus and have not returned to work yet, while a number have also resigned or gone absence without official leave,” the mayor lamented.
Meanwhile, Caelian said that after the provincial government was bashed on social media for alleged “poor quarantine facilities,” the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) took over in accommodating them.
What the province committed was the transport of the repatriated OFWs from the airport to the hotels contracted by OWWA as well as provide a team to take swab tests, he said.
Caelian said that from Aug. 22 to 23, there were a total of eight flights instead of just two flights a day as earlier agreed between OWWA and the provincial government.
“OWWA can only provide 580 hotel rooms but what came in were 770 OFWs,” he pointed out.
Caelian said they called on local government units to fetch their OFWs and bring them to their local quarantine facility, adding that the cities of Bago and Kabankalan and Pulupandan town to decongest the premises of a hotel in Bacolod City.
He said there are still many OFWs stranded overnight at the Bacolod-Silay Airport because no hotels will accept them.
“I called up the OWWA regional director to ask their national office to stop the return of OFWs to Negros because they cannot be accommodated anymore here,”Caelian said. “My first responders are tired already. They need to take a break, too.”/PN
