BACOLOD City – Some 134 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who are residents of this city and Negros Occidental stranded in Manila or Cebu due to travel restrictions imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 have returned home.
The repatriated OFWs are currently staying at hotels, tourist inns or pension houses here, upon the respective agreements of this city and this province with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration.
Around 4:30 a.m. on Monday, 12 residents of Bacolod City and 19 from various cities and municipalities in Negros Occidental arrived at the Bacolod-Silay Airport in Silay City from Manila via an AirAsia sweeper flight.
On Sunday afternoon, another group of repatriated OFWs, including eight from Negros Occidental and three from Bacolod City, arrived at the port of Escalante City in northern Negros Occidental from Tabuelan, Cebu.
Around 6 a.m. that day, seven OFWs from Bacolod City also came home along with 18 others from Negros Occidental aboard another AirAsia flight from Manila.
On Saturday, a Philippine Air Force C-130 aircraft from Manila arrived at the airport around 7:20 p.m., bringing home a total of 40 OFWs – 16 residents of Bacolod City and 24 others from Negros Occidental.
In the morning of the same day, a 2Go Group vessel from Manila brought home 11 OFWs from this city and 16 from this province, along with two locally stranded individuals.
A series of special flights and voyages arrived in Negros Occidental in the past week after the Department of the Interior and Local Government issued a resolution on May 25 that more than 24,000 OFWs in Metro Manila coming from various regions would be transported at an estimate of 8,000 persons per day to different provinces and cities.
It was in response to President Rodrigo Duterte’s directive to immediately send all the OFWs stuck in quarantine centers in Metro Manila to their respective homes within a week.(With a report from PNA/PN)
