ILOILO City – Only overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who test negative for SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), would be allowed to return to Western Visayas.
An estimated 150 Western Visayas OFWs are currently stranded in Metro Manila which is under an enhanced community quarantine. Around a hundred of them are residents of Iloilo province.
Members of the Western Visayas Regional Task Force (RTF) on COVID-19 drew up protocols on returning OFWs during a special meeting on April 13, according to Regional Director Jose Roberto Nuñez of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD).
Nuñez heads RTF COVID-19.
In Resolution No. 12, the task force listed the following conditions that returning OFWs must meet “to ensure the general welfare of the repatriates and the safety of residents in Region 6”:
* OFWs shall submit their COVID-19 real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test results from their country of origin should it be available.
* OFWs shall undergo RT PCR test prior to departure from their immediate point of entry. Only those whose results are negative will be allowed to depart and accepted in Region 6. Only Department of Health (DOH)-approved tests shall be accepted as valid results.
* OFWs are required to undergo 14-day quarantine and must be asymptomatic prior to departure from their immediate point of entry.
Nuñez said the task force resolution was forwarded to the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases in Metro Manila which is expected to carry out the conditions stated.
From the Iloilo Airport in Cabatuan town, the OFWs from Manila would be boarding a vehicle to be provided by the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in Region 6 and they would be transported to a quarantine facility to be identified by the OCD.
Nuñez, however, clarified that the local government units of the OFWs may take them should they want to.
The RTF COVID-19 is composed of the OCD, DOH and Department of Interior and Local Government.
For OFW concerns, it will be forming a subtask unit composed of OWWA, Department of Labor and Employment, Department of Foreign Affairs, Philippine National Police, Department of Tourism, Department of Transportation, Philippine Coast Guard, Bureau of Quarantine, DILG, and DOH.
The April 14 scheduled return here of some 100 Ilonggo OFWs stranded in Metro Manila did not push through. Gov. Arthur Defensor Jr. said he could not risk the safely of the families here of these OFWs and the public health in general.
He asked the Iloilo Airport acting manager, Maria Luisa Palma, to not allow the landing of the OFWs’ airplane.
Melissa Banias, chief of OCD Region 6’s Capability Building Section, assured the OFWs’ families here that OWWA’s central office in Metro Manila would take care of their stranded relatives, pointing out that no less than President Rodrigo Duterte issued an order that returning OFWs should not be turned away./PN
