BACOLOD City Mayor Evelio Leonardia and Governor Eugenio Jose Lacson appealed to national agencies and officials for closer coordination on repatriation of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from various places in the Philippines to the Province of Negros Occidental and Bacolod City.
In his letter addressed to Cabinet Secretary and Member of Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) Karlo Nograles, dated April 25, Leonardia said that they were surprised to hear the news that a boatload of OFWs is supposedly arriving on April 27, 44 bound for the different local government units (LGUs) of the Province of Negros Occidental and 58 for Bacolod City, as authorized by Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr., Chief Implementer for coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) National Action Plan.
He said they were also informed that more are arriving soon after.
“This news has considerably messed up the city’s own coordination with the Overseas Workers Welfare and Administration (OWWA) on the scheduling of repatriation trips for Bacolod OFWs. We thought the OWWA was the proper agency to work with. Now, we do not know if 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,” he added.
The mayor cited the joint position of the city and the province of Negros Occidental such that before the IATF of the national government or any government agency or official shall issue an authority for any transport by land, sea or air to bring home OFWs to Negros Occidental and/or Bacolod City. There should be prior coordination with Governor Lacson for OFWs bound for LGUs under his jurisdiction and with the undersigned for OFWs who are residents of Bacolod City.
That both the Province of Negros Occidental and Bacolod City, as destination LGUs of these OFWs, shall be given the chance to first agree on how many of these OFWs it can accept at any point in time before any land, sea or air transport is arranged for them by government authorities in Manila.
That both the Province of Negros Occidental and Bacolod City shall have the right to impose their own health protocols on these OFWs as they arrive in the province or the city regardless of previous health protocols that they may have already gone through before taking the final leg of their journey home; and that these returning OFWs need to give their prior conformity to these local health protocols first before they will be approved by Manila authorities to become part of the batch for any scheduled trip home.
“ While the Province of Negros Occidental and Bacolod City understand that these OFWs have to come home sooner or later, the matter of space availability at our various existing quarantine centers in the province and the city must be considered first in making any decision thereon,” Leonardia said.
He said this is so because the province LGUs had already agreed that any arriving OFW shall undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine at the government-managed facilities and a round of RT-PCR swab test as minimum health protocols, even if these OFWs may have already completed these procedures somewhere else before arriving within the province territorial jurisdiction.
“ We must also reserve space in our quarantine centers for those already in our community who may suddenly become high risk (PUMs) or person under monitoring because they were classified as close contacts of people who have become positive of the virus, and these new PUMs have to be taken out of their homes and placed in quarantine centers to prevent the spread of Covid-19 in their neighbors. These considerations, therefore, limit our capacity to receive any number of OFWs at any time because they first have to spend 14 days in quarantine at government facilities before they will be allowed to finally go home,” he added.