Press Release No. 099-03
March 20, 2003
OPLE
FREEZES DEPLOYMENT OF OFWs TO MIDEAST
Secretary of Foreign Affairs Blas F. Ople yesterday ordered a temporary suspension
of Filipino workers’ deployment to the Middle East in the face of the breakout
of war in Iraq.
Secretary Ople ordered the DFA passport office to continue issuing passports
but with limitation of travel to three countries: Saudi Arabia, Iraq,
Kuwait and Israel.
Ople requested his colleague, Labor Secretary Patricia Santo Tomas and POEA
Administrator Linda Baldoz, to put employment contracts for these areas on
hold until conditions in the Middle East will have stabilized.
The Secretary said, however, that contracts already being processed should
not be affected.
Ople’s order also provides for exemptions as exigencies may require, which
can be granted by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs or the Secretary of Labor.
Secretary Ople said that these destination countries have already been informed
of this decision.
At the same time the foreign secretary directed Undersecretary Delia Albert
to work out with the Department of Trade and Industry a mechanism to prepare
Filipino contractors and manpower providers a mechanism to participate in
the resumption and rehabilitation of a post-Saddam Iraq.
He told Albert to work with the major American contractors who will likely
be preferred by a new regime in Iraq. These firms, which have already employed
large numbers of Filipinos in the past, include, Haliburton, Bechtel and
Brown and Root.