DAGUPAN CITY—Please adopt a Lebanon overseas Filipino worker (OFW) returnee
and help save lives.

Delfina Camarillo, officer-in-charge of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration regional center for Luzon, made this appeal and said this could be a philanthropic act of recruitment agencies that could be Good Samaritans for these evacuated OFWs from war-torn Lebanon.

These recruitment agencies will help a lot these OFWs if they will have a No Placement Fee Policy enforced, she said. “We hope we could have a unified effort to help the victims of war,” she said referring to the repatriated OFWs. One or two OFWs who could be given free placement fee by the 1,700 recruitment agencies would mean a lot, she said.

Despite their harrowing and sad stories, about 10 per cent of evacuated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Lebanon who are from the Ilocos region expressed intent for redeployment abroad, Camarillo told local newsmen last week during the Pangasinan Tri-Media Association Kapihan here. She said the bottom line for the need to leave the country and work abroad again is perhaps poverty. She said these OFWs have children who are yet to finish college.

She added that they have appealed to various employment agencies to do this “act of sacrifice”.

Marivic Mondina, officer-in-charge of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) in region 1, also said that as of August 22, there were 544 Lebanon evacuees from region 1 who have returned to the country. These are from La Union (102), Ilocos Sur (143), Ilocos Norte (61), Pangasinan (243) and four others with incomplete address.

As per OWWA records, there were 2,025 OFWs deployed in Lebanon who are from
the Ilocos region. Of this number, 877 are from Pangasinan, 417 from La Union, 467 from Ilocos Sur and 264 from Ilocos Norte. Common problems of these OFWs were non-payment of salaries/remaining salaries were unclaimed, underpayment of contracted salary from $200 to $150 only, among others.

To date the OWWA in the region has assisted 344 families of OFWs.