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 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.
“We were told all flights in July and August have been cancelled because of restrictions [on inbound flights] in Philippine airports,” he said.
Long known as the fallback of the Philippine government in any economic crisis, the OFW sector is now in deep crisis for the first time since labour migration became state policy in the early 1980s. Their more than US$30 billion of annual remittances is a driver of the Philippine economy, and helps sustain millions of family members.
