Pinoy in UK to carry Olympic torch for OFWs

MANILA, Philippines - A Filipino occupational therapist in the United Kingdom has been chosen to carry the torch for some nine million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) around the world in the 2012 Olympics this July, a report posted on GMA News Online last Wednesday said.

Reymund Enteria, 30, who hails from Antipolo City and works for a medical center based in Tonbridge Kent, told GMA News Online that he was very surprised when he received the news last Saturday because “I’m not an athlete, just an ordinary individual.”

Enteria was chosen as one of the 8,000 “Coca-Cola Future Flame” participants, or the “inspirational people who will carry the Olympic Flame” as it goes around this year’s host country for 70 days, the report said.

Enteria said he will be running on July 22, the last Sunday before the Olympic’s opening ceremony at the Barking and Dagenham Borough of London.

He said it is a big honor for him to represent his fellow OFWs who “are not all about money, but courage and determination.”

The report further said that in a blog entry he wrote for the UK-based Filipino site AdoboRice.com, Enteria said he joined the “Future Flame” call for nominations using insights on the sacrifices of OFWs.

His mother worked abroad for four years and he eventually followed her footsteps when he left his career in the Philippines to work in Saudi Arabia where he suffered inequalities in terms of salary, the report said.

But his efforts soon paid off when he was recognized in the biggest rehabilitation in the Middle East, and became the first occupational therapist to handle the newly opened brain injury unit.

Years later, Enteria received an offer from UK’s The Raphael Medical Center, where he has been working as a full-time OT specialist for more than four years.

Enteria is dedicating his torch-bearing run to his fellow Filipinos abroad who have sacrificed a lot and are trying to bear with loneliness to be able to give their families a better life, the report said.