MANILA – About 3,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) have been in prison throughout the world for various offenses, 70 percent of whom are facing immigration-related charges, a spokesman of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) reported.
But Ed Malaya, the DFA spokesman, assured that once they have served their brief sentences, the OFWs would be deported to the Philippines.
Malaya did not elaborate but by immigration-related charges, he was apparently referring to the expatriate Filipinos who have been jailed for such offenses as overstaying and similar violations in the host countries where they have been deployed.
Aside from these cases, the other OFWs are now in jail for offenses like theft and illegal drug smuggling, he said.
Earlier, the DFA and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Authority (PDEA) sounded the alarm regarding the increasing number of OFWs who have been arrested by servings as “mules†of international drug syndicates to smuggle cocaine, shabu and marijuana to other countries.
Most of the OFWs arrested, the PDEA said, have become victims of illegal recruiters who promised them non-existent jobs abroad.
For his part, Malaya said that in the Middle East alone, 62 OFWs have been detained for drug-related charges. He said that of the total, 43, mostly women, are detained in Rhiyadh, Saudi Arabia.
By coming out with the number of OFWs in jail worldwide, the DFA was reacting to a call from the non-government organization Blas Ople Center and Training Center in suburban Pasay City, Metro Manila to conduct a complete inventory of expatriate Filipinos now in prison.
Susan Ople, the head of the center, emphasized the urgent need for the government, especially the DFA and labor attaches, to conduct more frequent visits to monitor their situation and to ensure their protection.
Ople also suggested that the government employ legal experts in the Philippine embassies and other diplomatic outposts abroad, especially in countries where there is a heavy concentration of OFWs, like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Middle East countries.
Ople is the daughter of the late senator Blas Ople, also former secretary of the DFA and the Department of Labor and Employment, after whom the center was named.
However, Migrante International, an alliance of OFW organizations,. disputed the DFA estimate and insisted there are more than 3,000 expatriate Filipinos who are in prison throughout the world.
In a statement, John Leonard Monterona, the coordinator of Migrante Middle East, many of the OFWs still in jail are still unaccounted for, including victims of abuse, maltreatment and rampant labor malpractices.
Monterona claimed that the never-ending abuses have forced many OFWs, especially domestic and construction workers who compose 80 percent of the workers in the Middle East, to run away from the erring employers.
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