Lebanon a year later: Repatriated OFWs want to return to Beirut

Around this time last year, at the height of the pandemic, I was 8,600 kilometers away from Manila, in crisis-stricken Lebanon, to cover the repatriation of 317 distressed overseas Filipinos.

Upon seeing downtown Beirut, I realized the situation was already so dire then.

Sept. 26, 2020, I wrote this in my notebook:

“Five hours in beautiful Beirut. A former French colony, Lebanon’s capital city was once touted as the Paris of the East. Today, it is war-torn and tired, and some buildings are riddled with bullets, while the port area showed remnants of the recent blast. There is uncertainty in the air, a strong undercurrent. We were warned repeatedly about the precarious security situation. But Beirut is rife with beauty. This is poetry in motion, just like Paris minus the rosé.”

As the sun set over the capital city, the Philippine Airlines sweeper flight left Aéroport Rafic Hariri International de Beyrout for the journey back to Manila with a cabin full of OFWs.

They couldn’t wait to go home. After all, the situation in Beirut at the time was so bleak. The banks were drying up, the economy was in shambles, and with the city still recovering from a deadly blast the month before, there was a disturbing stillness in the air; police and military men with long rifles were indeed everywhere.

One year later

One year later and the situation has worsened many times over.

Lebanon is facing one of the worst economic meltdowns of modern history. We hear of riots over worsening economic conditions. The country is now at risk of a total blackout by end-September due to dwindling fuel reserves; power outages currently last 23 hours.

Myra Aragon, a nurse I met in Beirut last year who opted to stay in Lebanon, said the blackouts have indeed started.

“In my area, there’s been no electricity for three straight days,” she told me in August.

Aside from the power outages, prices of anything and everything have skyrocketed – a 400 ML of Pepsi costs the equivalent of P400.

Workers, including Filipinos who chose to stay, have not received their salaries because employers have gone bankrupt due to the economic implosion.

As if these weren’t bad enough, many can’t withdraw their savings because the banks have run out of dollars. Myra is one of them. She can’t go home yet because she is waiting for the situation to improve so she can withdraw her hard earned money.

“If I go home, I won’t be able to get my money from the bank,” she says.

Beirut or Manila?

And yet, this isn’t the most terrible news about Lebanon and OFWs.

The saddest part about this story really is that many OFWs who were repatriated last year are desperate to go back to Lebanon despite the economic crisis ripping through the Western Asian country.

It’s because they can’t find jobs here in the Philippines either, even after a year since they were repatriated.

It was Myra who first shared with me this sad news.

“But there are no jobs here in Lebanon now. They will not be able to make money here,” she says.

I also asked Romana, 65, who was among the OFWs repatriated from Lebanon, but on a different flight. A domestic helper, she returned to Manila in December 2019.

Until now, she has not been able to find a job and is instead staying in a cramped borrowed room in her sister’s place in a slum community in Valenzuela. Her daughter, also repatriated, is with another relative because they could not fit in her sister’s house. She, too, could not find a job here.

“I wish I was still in Lebanon even with all the corruption there,” she said.

To make ends meet, Romana has been eking out a living by selling street food such as banana cue.

She earned P50 the other day, and P60 the next, she shared with me. She was happy to earn the past two days, but she also knows she needs to earn more.

Attention DOLE

I strongly urge Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III to look into this, as well as the situation of all repatriated Filipinos.

Two weeks ago, the Philippine Embassy in Lebanon repatriated 280 overseas Filipinos in a sweeper flight that also passed through Manama, Bahrain before proceeding to Manila.

This group represented the largest batch of repatriates for the year composed of undocumented and distressed Filipinos in Lebanon and five repatriates from Syria.

The embassy’s shelters also experienced a spike in the number of wards because of the crisis.

The Duterte administration’s job does not end in repatriating distressed OFWs or simply bringing them home. The government must provide them an environment where they can survive and reintegrate back into the workforce.

Desperate

What could be sadder than the grim reality that Filipinos want to leave the Philippines again even for a place like Lebanon, which is in such a sorry state now?

It is a testament to the desperation of Filipinos.

The desperation of the players in Netflix’s Squid Game comes to mind; and when our kababayans don’t feel they can survive even in their very own home country, it is a testament to how much the government has failed them.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com