DFA deploys team to assess OFWs’ safety in Saudi village

MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has deployed a team to assess the safety of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in a village in Saudi Arabia reportedly affected by skirmishes in strife-torn Yemen.

Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Jesus Yabes on Wednesday, September 2, said he had instructed the consulate in Jeddah to send a team to the village, which is said to be 13.5 kilometers away from the Saudi-Yemen border.

OFWs based in the village of Dhahran Al Janoub earlier told pro-OFW Blas Ople Policy Center of rockets being fired by Yemen-based Huthi rebels reaching their area. 

Yabes confirmed that security in the area may be volatile but assured the public the DFA team would come up with its report on what next steps to take.

He gave the directive last August 26, the same day news about concerned OFWs in Dhahran Al Janoub came out.

A Saudi-led coalition launched a series of air strikes last March 27 on Huthi rebel camps in a bid to quell the alleged Iran-backed Shiite rebellion and keep Yemen President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in power.

As early as February 19, the Philippines has placed Yemen under Alert Level 4, which means a mandatory pull-out of all Filipino workers there and a deployment ban on new ones.

Contingency plan

“[What’s happening in] Al Janoub is the same as what happened in Najran. That’s the border across Yemen…. That’s the area of the Huthis,” Yabes explained in a chance interview with Rappler.

Najran is a Saudi city some 100 kilometers away from Dharahn Al Janoub, also near the Saudi-Yemen border.

An earlier Philippine team had been deployed to Najran City for the plotting of a contingency plan as the security situation gets worse.

Community leaders among the Filipinos there, as well as Saudi employers of the Filipino workers, had been determined and provided guidance for the contingency plan.

The team was deployed to Najran as war planes of the anti-Huthi coalition of Arab states started bombing key areas in Yemen this year.

Call for emergency shelter

A composite team was also earlier assigned to Yemen to assist Filipino workers in their mandatory repatriation, but some 100 workers preferred to stay. (READ: Fearing job loss, about 100 OFWs stay in strife-torn Yemen)

The spill-over effects of the fighting, however, has affected communities in nearby areas in Saudi.

An emergency shelter and a small embassy team are needed specifically in Dhahran Al Janoub, said migrant workers’ rights advocate Susan “Toots” Ople of the Blas Ople Center.

There are about 70 Filipino medical workers, construction workers, engineers, and mechanics – some with their families – in the said village, according to the center’s tally.

The Philippines is a known labor-sending country. Over 10.5 million Filipinos are either temporarily working or permanently residing abroad, according to the 2013 CFO Compendium of Statistics.

While OFWs’ remittances boost the economy, President Benigno Aquino III envisions “a government that creates jobs at home so that working abroad will be a choice rather than a necessity.” – Rappler.com