84 Pinoys jailed in Kuwaiti jails will be home for Christmas season

Home for the holidays.

Eighty-four overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) doing time in Kuwait jails will make it home to spend Christmas with their families, the Department of the Foreign Affairs (DFA) said yesterday.

Part of a batch of 116 workers facing various minor charges in Kuwait, the OFWs will be repatriated following negotiations between the Philippine embassy and Kuwaiti authorities, the DFA said.

Last Monday, five workers and a four-year-old boy, who was left behind in Kuwait by his Egyptian father and Filipina mother, came home. It was not immediately clear why the child was left behind.

They were met by President Arroyo who initiated a project to help Filipinos working overseas to reunite with their families back home.

The future of thousands of Filipinos working in the Middle East has become uncertain because of the standoff between Iraq and the United States. Washington accuses Baghdad of building weapons of mass destruction.

Meanwhile, the Philippine embassy in Jakarta has reported that it had helped five Filipinos fly back home on the 22nd after being stranded in Indonesia.

They are part of a group of eight who were victimized by illegal recruiters. They arrived in Jakarta only to find no jobs waiting for them there. The embassy is still arranging the repatriation of the remaining three workers.

Meanwhile, Christmas this year will be bright for the family of Rizalde Astrolabio, who came home yesterday after spending three and a half years in a Chinese prison.

Astrolabio was sentenced to ten years in prison for unintentionally killing one of four Chinese men who ganged up on him during a dispute over an unpaid restaurant bill in 1999.

His sentence was reduced to three years because of good behavior but Philippine authorities sought his early release when his health began to deteriorate because of diabetes, arthritis and depression.

As part of the condition for his parole, Astrolabio will be under the supervision of local police, Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople said.

Ople said Philippine Ambassador Josue Villa went to Tianjin to fetch Astrolabio and bring him to Beijing for his trip home.

Astrolabio’s early release was made on account of the good relations between the Philippines and China.

China’s vice chief justice Jiang Xingchang assured his release during a courtesy call on Ople in November.

During her state visit to China in October last year, President Arroyo sought Astrolabio’s release when she met with China’s President Jiang Zemin.

She again raised the subject during the visit of Li Peng, chairman of the Chinese legislature, during his visit to Manila last September.

Lack of jobs and better pay force thousands of Filipinos each month to seek greener pastures abroad and there are about seven million working in at least a dozen countries.

At least 2,000 leave the country every month.

The government depends heavily on the money they remit to their families back home – which reaches at least $7 billion annually – to prop up the country’s sluggish economy.

Their contribution and sacrifices had prompted the government to declare them as the Philippines’ modern-day heroes.

To recognize their contribution to the economy, Congress is currently debating an absentee voting bill that will enable Filipinos abroad to vote in elections back home.

If passed in time, Filipinos overseas can participate in the 2004 presidential elections.