Redeployment of OFWs from Israel a govt priority
AS soon as hostilities in Israel deescalate, the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW) will redeploy Filipino workers who were repatriated because of the war between the Hamas militant group and Israelis.
“The first option is always to have them go back to their current employment once the situation deescalates,” Undersecretary Hans Leo Cacdac, DMW officer-in-charge, said in a media forum on Saturday.
He said this is the reason government is making sure there is an amicable separation between the Filipino overseas workers (OFWs) and their Israeli employers before they are repatriated.
Sixty OFWs are set to arrive today from Israel. The fourth batch is composed of 32 hotel workers and 28 caregivers. There were 59 OFWs in the first three batches.
Cacdac said other forms of assistance will be made available to the repatriated worker, like overseas employment facilitation for those who want to work in other countries.
The Department of Labor and Employment will also offer local employment facilitation services while the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration will provide livelihood assistance, Cacdac said.
At the House, Rep. France Castro (PL, ACT) yesterday assailed the Marcos administration for not voting with the large majority of countries in support of the United Nations resolution calling for an “immediate humanitarian truce” in Gaza.
“The reason to abstain given by the Philippine delegation in the UN is wrong because this conflict did not just start on October 7. There is a long history of the struggle for Palestinian liberation and Israel’s aggression that has to be considered and told,” Castro said in a statement.
The militant lawmaker, who is a member of the Makabayan bloc, said the world cannot condemn Hamas’ attack on Israel “without discussing the root of the conflict which is Israel’s occupation of their land and the almost daily attacks they are subjected to.”
The militant Makabayan bloc has filed a still unnumbered resolution calling on the House of Representatives to express its strong condemnation of Israel’s “indiscriminate attacks, violence and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”
In the resolution, Castro, along with fellow party-list Reps.
