Philippines’ OFW crisis: more than 700,000 could lose their jobs due to the coronavirus by year end
Manila is running out of money to repatriate overseas Filipino workers who have become displaced refugees due to the Covid-19 pandemic
There are 346,555 OFWs affected by the coronavirus but only 85,334 are stranded and want to go home
Teodoro Santos* has been waiting for two months in Doha for the flight that will take him and his family home.
They all have plane tickets but “the Philippine government has always been cancelling our flights for unknown reasons”, he said, leaving him and more than 5,000 other overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) stranded in Qatar after losing their jobs due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
They have approached the Philippine Overseas Labour Office and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration under the Department of Labour to no avail, Santos said. The embassy told them to add their names to a repatriation list, but could not say when they would be brought home.