MANILA – A party-list lawmaker stressed that the ban on the deployment of Filipino workers to Libya must stay.
Rep. Aniceto Bertiz III (ACTS-OFW) also urged the government to bring home “now” any remaining Filipino in the war-torn country.
On July 6 armed men abducted three Filipinos and one South Korean at a water project site in western Libya.
There is still “an ongoing civil war” in Libya, Bertiz said. “The seized technicians may have entered Libya with working visas obtained from a third country.”
“It is also possible [they] were already in Libya a long time ago and that they shunned repatriation when the Philippine government brought home some 14,000 workers in 2011 and 2014,” he added.
The Libyan government has repeatedly appealed to the Philippines to lift its deployment ban, the party-list group said.
According to ACTS-OFW, Libya’s medical and oil sectors are in “desperate” need of foreign professionals.
“But as we can see in this latest kidnapping incident, the ban should stay. It is simply too dangerous for our workers to be there,” Bertiz said.
“In fact, if we still have citizens left there, we should bring them home now because all foreigners there are being targeted by lawless elements,” he said.
Aside from security issues, foreigners in Libya encounter difficulties in remitting money, claimed Bertiz.
“The best way to secure the safe release of the three Filipinos is for us to coordinate our efforts with the Libyan and South Korean governments.”/PN
