250 Pinoys to build Taliban jails in Cuba

At least 250 Filipino workers, including engineers, were flown to the US naval base in Cuba yesterday to build more jails for captured Taliban and al-Qaeda members from Afghanistan.

After invading Afghanistan and toppling the Taliban regime earlier this year, US troops have been airlifting to the Guantanamo Bay naval base — also called "Camp X-Ray" — thousands of captured Taliban fighters, whom the Americans had classified as "battlefield detainees."

Sources in the labor recruitment industry told The STAR the 250 Filipino workers left the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) yesterday afternoon on a chartered plane for a direct flight to Cuba.

It was not known if the aircraft was chartered by the United States government or the recruitment agency that facilitated the hiring of the workers.

The workers will reportedly get a monthly salary of $1,000, with free food and accommodation and full benefits in case of any work-related accident.

Their employment contracts will be good for three to six months. It is not clear if a worker who has completed six months on the job can renew his contract for another six months.

Officially, the workers were hired to construct additional barracks for US soldiers at Guantanamo Bay naval base, and their employment contracts processed at the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) might contain this stipulation.

But sources said the Filipino workers will be building more prisons for thousands of captured al-Qaeda terrorists that are expected to arrive at the huge US naval base in Cuba from Afghanistan in the coming months.

Within 72 hours, the recruited workers were able to secure from the POEA the necessary working permits as the government agency had done away with the usual bureaucratic red tape.

It is not known who pulled the strings to speed up the processing of their papers or whether the US government had made representations with the Philippine government.

However, sources told The STAR the passports, medical certificates and pre-departure orientation seminar certificates of the workers were processed by the Anglo-European recruitment agency in a very short time with help from the US State Department.

Accreditation papers of the US-British agency were also approved within a day after telephone calls from the Philippine Embassy in Washington, DC and the State Department, sources added.