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Philippines reiterates ban on deployment
of Filipino workers to Kurdistan and Iraq
23.4.2007
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April
23, 2007
MANILA, Philippines: The Philippine
government is unwilling to ease its ban on the
deployment of Filipino workers to Iraq despite
renewed efforts by foreign employers to lure them to
jobs in the battered nation, officials said Monday.
The Philippine Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden,
recently received a letter from a company expressing
interest in recruiting Filipinos to work as
housemaids in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region,
Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Esteban Conejos
said.
Philippine officials continue to receive reports of
efforts by other foreign employers to recruit
Filipinos to work elsewhere in Iraq, he said.
"This ban is enforced to assure that our nationals
are protected, and that they are not exposed to
undue harm," Conejos said in a statement issued by
the Department of Foreign Affairs.
The Philippines banned deployment of workers to Iraq
after insurgents abducted Filipino truck driver
Angelo de la Cruz in July 2004.
To save his life, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
granted the kidnappers' demand for the early
withdrawal of a small Philippine peacekeeping
contingent from Iraq — a decision strongly
criticized by Washington and other allies, but
applauded at home.
A second Filipino, accountant Robert Tarongoy, was
also abducted by Iraqi militants. He was freed
in June 2005 after almost eight months in captivity.
About 5,000-6,000 Filipinos are employed in U.S.
military camps across Iraq, mostly as cooks and
maintenance personnel. A smaller number work as
bodyguards for businessmen. Most were already in
Iraq when the Philippine government imposed the
deployment ban.
Despite the ban, many Filipino workers are believed
to have slipped into Iraq through neighboring
countries like Jordan, prompting the government to
appeal to those countries to help block such
passage.
Philippine Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, who helped
secure the freedom of de la Cruz and Tarongoy, said
it's difficult to monitor compliance to the
deployment ban because Filipino diplomats were moved
to Jordan from Baghdad in 2005 for security reasons.
He said he fears desperate Filipinos may be
continuing to slip illegally into Iraq in search of
better -paying jobs with the help of unscrupulous
employers.
The money sent home by more than 7 million Filipinos
working abroad helps prop up the country's frail
economy. They sent home a record US$12.8 billion
(€9.41 billion) last year, and were forecast to
remit US$14 billion (€10.3 billion) this year,
according to Manila's central bank
AP
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