Remains of Pinay engineer killed in Iraq fire arrives

MANILA, Philippines – The remains of Marica Cente, a Filipina engineer who was killed in a hotel fire in Northern Iraq together with three other telecommunication engineers arrived on board Qatar Airways at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport on Wednesday night.

Two other Filipinos were injured in the hotel fire. Another Filipino volunteer working for the USAID was wounded when Taliban militants attacked their quarters in Afghanistan three weeks ago.

Officials said the death of four overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) proves that the government cannot implement the ban on the deployment of workers in Iraq that was implemented since 2004. 

The Department of Foreign Affairs imposed the ban on the deployment of workers in Le-banon, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ban is “useless” since hundreds of Filipino workers continue to defy the order and slip into Iraq and Afghanistan from neighboring countries like into Kuwait and Pakistan, where there is no ban on OFWs.

There are now 7,000 Filipinos, that remit at least P3 billion to their families in the Philippines every year, working in Afghanistan and the number is increasing every month as more US troops are pouring into 64 operating bases of the US Armed Forces that need Filipino skilled workers to maintain the camps. The government should review the ban on OFWs that take risks because of the lucrative salaries and benefits offered by the US and other European contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Recruitment expert Emmanuel Geslani said the ban in OFWs is discriminatory and unfair to workers in the war-torn countries.

He said that earlier this week a Filipino executive working in a USAID project in Afghanistan called for the Philippine government to OFWs equal protection like what the government is giving to seamen entering dangerous areas in Somalia.

It’s time for the government to lift the ban so that workers would be legalized and given protection that they deserve since they too are contributing to the economy, Geslani said.'He said that it is difficult to stop the entry of OFWs to Afghanistan and Iraq where the workers are vulnerable to exploitation.

Aside from the illegal OFWs in Iraq and Afghanistan there are also 1,000 Filipino professionals working for international organizations like the UN, USAID, World Bank, IMF, International Red Cross, US and European construction, Geslani said.