OFWs live like ‘squatters’ beside RP post in Jeddah

About 20 stranded Filipinos, including four children, have been staying in makeshift shelter beside the Philippine Consulate General’s (PCG) office in Jeddah, a Filipino migrants’ rights group there reported. Migrante-Middle East said the stranded overseas Filipino workers, some of whom ran away from their employers, were the same one who previously stayed under the Kandara bridge in Jeddah. “Until now, we have been waiting the PCG’s action to provide a shelter for the run-away and stranded OFWs who were forced to live on their makeshift at the side of the PCG building in Jeddah," said Migrante regional coordinator John Leonard Monterona. The PCG transferred to its new along Umm Al Qura Road, Rehab District in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia last year.

Hot and humid “It is terribly hot and humid now in Jeddah, reaching as high as 40°C high. It is inhumane and heartless for PCG officials, while sitting in their air-conditioned rooms, not to bother offering a shelter to these stranded OFWs," Monterona said. Calls to the phone of Consul Leo Tito Ausan Jr. of the PCG in Jeddah were repeatedly dropped. Monterona said the distressed OFWs are now facing another problem as the owner of the land where they are staying has asked them to move out and threatened to charge them for illegally occupying his land. Until its transfer, the PCG used to rent a shelter for stranded and run-away Filipinos where they could stay while awaiting repatriation, according to Monterona. Monterona said he learned from a Consulate official, whom he did not name, that the PCG stopped renting a building due to limited funds. Ridiculous “We find [this] ridiculous since there must be a government budget allocated for that on a yearly basis," he said, adding that the PCG is also generating its own income from passport renewal and other consular fees being charged to Filipinos there. He urged Aquino to appoint a new breed of public servants who will respond to the needs of OFWs in distress by providing improved on-site services. “During President Benigno ‘Ninoy’ Aquino III’s inauguration, he made a clear policy statement and after a week issued directive to the Foreign Affairs department and other concerned government agencies to be responsive to OFWs’ issues and concerns, but it seems that his message has not been heard clearly by various RP officials abroad," Monterona said. - KBK, GMANews.TV