The Department of Foreign Affairs on Monday said more Filipinos were expected to be brought home from Sudan this week.
In an interview with Daily Tribune, Foreign Affairs Assistant Secretary Paul Cortez said 74 more Filipinos were going home from Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Cortez said a total of 15 Filipinos from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia are expected to arrive today at 8:45 p.m. following the first batch of 17 government-assisted evacuees who arrived in Manila on Saturday.
Last week, the DFA said about 32 Filipinos were rescued by the Saudi Arabian government from Sudan.
Cortez said that on Tuesday, 34 Filipinos from Cairo will be brought home followed by 24 more by 3 May.
At the moment, Cortez said, a total of 616 Filipinos have been evacuated from Khartoum, with 414 already in Egypt.
In a separate interview, DFA Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Eduardo de Vega said there were less than 100 Filipinos who decided to stay in Sudan.
According to the DFA, there were around 750 registered Filipinos in the war-torn African nation.
Hunger, power loss bug OFWs
Meanwhile, hunger and power blackouts stalk overseas Filipino workers who were not included in the ongoing evacuation from Sudan by the Philippine government, the daughter of a teacher who was denied help in evacuating by the embassy in Cairo said yesterday.
“Food and electricity are running low and there is still no response from the DFA, OWWA (Overseas Workers Welfare Administration) or DMW (Department of Migrant Workers),” Xenia Pauline, daughter of OFW Katherine Namok, told the Daily Tribune.
In her latest chat with her mother, Xenia learned that food was running low at the temporary shelter where her mother and a Filipino family of four were staying. A few stores were open but prices have skyrocketed due to the conflict and the supply of gasoline to fuel generators is limited.
In the absence of electricity and the Internet, they have become dependent on the data load of their cell phones to communicate with one another.
Xenia’s mother, a teacher, was trapped in a high school compound near the Presidential Palace where the fighting broke out.
Foreign and local faculty and staff of the school were evacuated and her mother was the only Filipino trapped in the area.
The daughter said the DFA has stopped communicating with her with regard to her mother, prompting her to seek the help of the OWWA but still no action was taken to help the distressed worker in Sudan.
When the Internet and electricity were cut off in Khartoum, Namok was forced to hire a taxi to get to a bus terminal where she and some local residents rented a van to get to the City of Al Qadarif after a nine-hour land trip.
Primary school teacher
Namok was working as a primary school teacher at a British school. Her passport was with her employer for processing of her work permit when the fighting erupted.
She said the British employer assured the school workers they would be provided assistance and were told to stay where they were and wait for the situation to normalize.
“The priority of my mother is to get her passport and her salary so she could come home,” the daughter said.
The office of Migrant Workers Secretary Susan Ople asked the Daily Tribune to provide them with the contact number of Namok last Saturday, but as of yesterday, she had not received a call or message from the department. @tribunephl_jom