BACOLOD City – The provincial government of Negros Occidental has refused to accept the return of some 88 Negrense seafarers stranded in Manila.
Their health status – whether positive or not for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) – is a big concern, according to Dr. Jonathan Lobaton, chief of the Provincial Incident Management Team (PIMT).
In a letter dated April 26 addressed to Regional Disaster Risk and Reduction Management Council chief Jose Roberto Nuñez, Lobaton signified the province’s refusal to accept the scheduled arrivals of the seafarers to the province this week.
“We currently have 130 persons in our quarantine facility area manned 24/7 by our personnel thus the arrival of 88 seafarers will hamper our operation,” said Lobaton.
He added that due to the limited accommodation of the provincial quarantine facility, the provincial government would be prioritizing non-overseas Filipino workers (OFWs).
“As much as we wanted our residents come home, we also have to consider protecting the health and safety of our people here,” he added. “For the time being, they may stay in quarantine until we can allocate and schedule their return after they were able to comply with requirement.”
The Western Visayas Regional Task Force on COVID-19 recently drew up protocols on returning OFWs.
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-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.
Meanwhile,Mayor Evelio Leonardia has written a letter to the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) on the Emerging Infectious Diseases, requesting for closer coordination on the repatriation of the OFWs from various places in the Philippines to the province of Negros Occidental and Bacolod City.
In a letter dated April 25 addressed to Cabinet Secretary and IATF member Karlo Nograles, Leonardia said that he and Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson were caught by surprise that a boatload of OFWs will supposedly be arriving today.
According to Leonardia, they found out that 44 of these OFWs were bound for different local government units in the province, and 58 for Bacolod City, as authorized by Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer for COVID-19 national action plan.
Leonardia said that this has considerably messed up the city’s own coordination with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration on the scheduling of repatriation trips for Bacolod OFWs.
“We thought the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration was the proper agency to work with. Now, we do not know of the batch of Bacolod OFWs that OWWA is ready to process is the same or different from.those supposedly arriving on April 27 and thereafter,” the mayor said.
Leonardia said Gov. Jose Eugenio Lacson was supposed to co-sign the letter with him as a joint statement, but the governor is in San Carlos City and has asked him instead to cite the experience of the province on the OFW repatriation issue./PN
