The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has assured that contingency measures are in place to assist distressed overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in the Middle East in case hostilities in the region further escalate.
There are over 90,000 Filipino migrant workers in the Middle East, including those in Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Iran.
DFA Assistant Secretary Robert Ferrer Jr. told the House Committee on Overseas Workers Affairs that the agency already has existing contingency plans in every embassy in the region where there are high numbers of OFWs.
This includes embassies in Tel Aviv, Israel; Amman, Jordan; Cairo, Egypt; Beirut, Lebanon; and Tehran, Iran.
The DFA also bared that it had recently completed successful repatriations in Sudan, Gaza, Lebanon, and Iraq and that no OFWs in Israel and Iran had requested repatriation.
"I'd like to announce that no requests for emergency repatriation have been received from our embassy in Tel Aviv in other than normal routine repatriations. No Filipino has requested for repatriation because they are afraid of Iran's rockets," Ferrer said.
The DFA official likewise assured that the One-Country Team Approach (OCTA) remains in place in the face of rising tensions in the Middle East.
OCTA is where all plans, suggestions, and contingency measures by the ambassadors or consul general relative to their official engagements with representatives of partner agencies in their respective jurisdictions are being laid out to ensure Philippine foreign policy overseas is properly coordinated, coherent, and compliant with the laws of the host government.
Meanwhile, Undersecretary Eduardo de Vega vowed that Philippine diplomats are "doing what we can so that there will be no escalating of tensions" in the Middle East.
Iran and Israel have long been locked in hostilities that resulted in the latter's bombing of Iran's consulate in Syria earlier this month.
Ferrer said around 300 missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles or drones flew toward Israel as Iran's retaliation to the deadly attack, but 99 percent of these were intercepted by the Israeli defense system.
