Only Malacañang can help stranded Ghanaian teen — UNHCR

CLARK FIELD, Pampanga — The head of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the Philippines suggested the intervention of President Arroyo on the case of a 19-year-old Ghana football player stranded for over two months now at the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) here.

Rico Salcedo, UNHCR head in the Philippines, said Ghanaian Ayi Nii Aryee does not qualify as a refugee based on both local and international criteria, but could still hope that he would be allowed to study in the Philippines after the Singaporean government denied his student visa.

"Only the President can waive immigration requirements and instruct the Department of Justice which has jurisdiction over the immigration authorities to grant his request," Salcedo told The STAR.

When Singapore denied twice his application for a student visa, Aryee shifted his plea, citing "humanitarian considerations," to the Philippine government to allow him to take up a computer course in the country.

An orphan, Aryee said his uncle, Wisdom Tobi Tanko, who is married to a Filipina and has been staying in Bacoor, Cavite for 15 years now, has expressed willingness to take him under his custody.

Salcedo said the UNHCR cannot help him as a refugee since he is not under threat of persecution in his native country in West Africa.

Aryee told The STAR that apart from lack of finances to buy airplane tickets costing about $1,800, he can no longer return home since the season for football, which used to be his only source of income, has already started in Ghana, thus he can no longer be taken in.

Aryee’s ordeal started when he was invited last April by the Sporting Afrique Football Club in Singapore to participate in a three-week football trial with the club, an affiliate of the Football Association of Singapore.

While in Singapore, he decided to apply for a Singaporean student visa and paid tuition amounting to S$3,800 for a computer course at the Informatics Computer School there. The tuition was non-refundable.

While waiting for the approval of his student visa, Aryee decided to fly to the Philippines as a tourist last July 3 to visit his uncle in Bacoor, Cavite. He took a Tiger Airways flight and landed at Clark.

On July 12, he departed via the same airline from Clark to Singapore where he was, however, denied entry because his student visa, it turned out, had been disapproved.

He was told to board the same flight back to Clark from where he sent the Singaporean government an appeal on his application for a student visa.

Two days after he was rejected in Singapore, he took a Tiger Airways flight to Macau, even without a Philippine immigration stamp on his passport, but he was again told to board the same flight back to Clark. He had planned to fly from Macau to Bangkok, Thailand where he has a brother.

Later, Jesse Bunag, Clark chief of the Bureau of Immigration, asked Tiger Airways to coordinate with immigration officials in Macau to allow Aryee to land there for a connecting flight to Bangkok.

But with Macau officials disagreeing to the move, Philippine immigration authorities could not stamp Aryee’s passport even for other destinations since he had no status at all in the country.

Imelda de los Santos, of the Department of Foreign Affairs office here, said they could not help Aryee since a request for a student visa should be filed from an applicant’s country or elsewhere before he could be allowed entry into the country.

"The applicant should wait for the approval of his student visa in the Philippines before he can be allowed to come in as a student," she said.

"The case of Aryee is unusual since he is already in the Philippines without any status as an alien," she said.

De los Santos, however, advised Aryee to seek help from the nearest consulate of Ghana, which is in Singapore. Ghana does not have a consulate in the Philippines.

At present, Aryee subsists on small sums of money which his brother sends for his daily needs, although DMIA personnel have been sharing their food with him.

Clark International Airport Corp. executive vice president Alexander Cauguiran has also been sending him some food supplies.