Thursday, October 16, 2008 Passports of returnees will be ‘clean By Katrina A. Balmaceda Sun.Star Correspondent
SIX days from now, the 23 Filipinos detained in Trinidad island just might find themselves home again.
They hope to do so with legitimate release papers and without the stigma of the word “deported” stamped on their passports.
Marisol Fortuna, the sister of detained engineer Jacqueline Fortuna, expressed this hope yesterday in a phone interview with Sun.Star Cebu.
Marisol said she claimed the tickets for the 23 detained overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) at noon last Tuesday.
It was the Cebu Provincial Government that bought the tickets. Gov. Gwendolyn Garcia, though, reportedly made it clear that the recruitment agency hired by the 23 OFWs will have to reimburse the government for the cost of the tickets.
Be Glad
The OFWs’ families, all Cebuanos, previously demanded that Be Glad Worldwide Placement Agency (BGWPA) pay for the return fare.
BGWPA supervisor Josefina Casianan said this will depend on the investigation by two of the agency’s representatives who left for Trinidad from New York last Sunday.
Lawyer Felipe Landicho, who represents the detainees’ families, said that when the OFWs arrive, an investigation will be done to see what their course of action will be.
But the detained Filipinos are not coming home without a glitch.
According to Fortuna, Trinidad’s Ministry of Immigration is investigating the OFWs by batches.
The investigation was reportedly a result of labor attaché Florenda Herrera’s recent visit to Trinidad to intercede with the government about the detainees’ situation.
Not deported
The investigation will establish whether or not the detained OFWs were really victims in the situation.
A group of eight workers, including Jacqueline, have already been investigated and have been granted release papers by the Ministry of Immigration.
This came with the promise that their passports won’t be stamped with the word “deported”, Marisol added.
As of yesterday afternoon, they still did not know how the investigation of the second batch of eight OFWs had gone.
But if all goes according to plan, the 23 workers will be leaving Trinidad by Monday.
From the Port of Spain, they will travel to London, to Doha, to Manila and, finally, to Cebu. They are expected to arrive at 8 a.m. next Wednesday.
This means that the 23 OFWs just might make it back home a month and a week after being detained at the port of Trinidad.
The OFWs claimed they had been given fake working permits by BGWPA and that their employer, Anderson McPhee, had maltreated them.
In a statement, though, McPhee claimed it was the other way around and that the 23 had not complied with the company rules.
BGWPA has refused to decide until it concludes its own investigation. The agency’s legal officer, Antonio Cabreros, also said he does not know whether or not the agency will reimburse the government for the airfare.
Section 53 of Republic Act 8042 or Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipino Act says that the agency must “shoulder the cost of the plane fare for the repatriation of workers without a prior determination of the cause of the termination of the workers’ employment.”
However, the agency may recover the cost of repatriation from the worker if the termination of employment is found to be the worker’s fault.
Section 55 of the law adds that the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency (POEA) may suspend the agency if it fails to provide an airfare ticket within 48 hours.
BGWPA is accredited by the POEA. (KAB)
