‘We’d rather die in Iraq than starve at home’

Clutching a bag of used clothes, Edgardo Lumapas scampers under a makeshift tent outside a Manila recruitment agency promising jobs in Iraq despite a government ban after the kidnapping of a Filipino truck driver.

The 42-year-old father of five has been lining up daily for the past two months outside the Anglo-European Services recruitment agency, hoping for a job interview and a chance to earn up to $600 a month as a forklift operator in Iraq.

Like millions of others, Lumapas says his family’s chance of survival rests on his being able to work abroad. Armed with P4,000 in pocket money he borrowed from friends, he left his family in Leyte province in May for Manila.

"We’d rather die in Iraq while earning than die of hunger here in the Philippines," Lumapas said, speaking on behalf of hundreds of fellow job seekers huddled under a canvas canopy made from a huge poster of US President George W. Bush and his staunch ally President Arroyo.

If Lumapas gets lucky, he will join the estimated seven million Filipino workers scattered all over the world whose dollar remittances keep the economy afloat.

The government hails them as "new generation heroes" sending home, according to the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, an estimated $7.6 billion in 2003 alone, equivalent to 7.5 percent of the Philippines’ gross domestic product (GDP).

But these overseas Filipino workers also risk their lives daily working in environments that offer them little protection.

Many of them work as construction workers and drivers in the Middle East, while others work as domestic helpers and entertainers in Asia and seamen in ships on all the oceans.

The danger has been magnified by the abduction this month of truck driver Angelo de la Cruz by Iraqi militants demanding the pullout of Filipino troops from the war-ravaged country.

The father of eight from Mexico, Pampanga is threatened with beheading by the militants and has become a symbolic figure for the millions of overseas Filipinos.

De la Cruz was originally based in Saudi Arabia, but was lured into driving a truckload of crude oil into Iraq with promises of a threefold boost in his wages.

The kidnapping has forced the government to impose a travel ban to Iraq, where there are more than 3,000 Filipinos working mostly in US military installations.

Yet, as the country anxiously awaits his fate, thousands continue to line up outside the Anglo-European Services offices. The queue stretches for about two blocks, rendering the narrow city roads impassable to vehicular traffic.

Many of them come from faraway provinces, sleeping on pavements for days on end with only the neon light of a convenience store providing security at night.

A volunteer with a megaphone barks out the names of those who passed the initial screening amid joyful hoots of those who made it and heart-wrenching cries from those who failed.

"My head and stomach are hurting from hunger, but I still have to wait here and wait for my turn," says Erlinda Quillana, a 46-year-old mother of six.

"I have been here for five days and I need to be interviewed. I need to desperately get out of the Philippines because there are no jobs here," she said, her eyes welling with tears.

A former street vendor, Quillana is hoping to be hired as a laundry woman in Iraq and be able to send her children to school and earn enough to buy medicine for her cancer-stricken husband.

"This is our only chance for our status in life to change," she said. "I am willing to risk it there."

Rosalindo Baldoz, administrator of the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency, says the De la Cruz episode could temporarily derail deployments to the Middle East. However, she said the Philippines exports labor to over 180 other countries.

She said all overseas workers are adequately protected if they leave through legal channels, but once they are on the ground they have the liberty to enter into new contracts with other employers.

The exodus of workers will continue "until there is enough and adequate jobs locally that they can apply for," Baldoz said. "But if they can’t, there is always overseas employment."

Founded in the 1960s, the Anglo-European Services pioneered the trade of deploying Filipino workers abroad. It won the contract to supply "camp support services" for US military installations in Iraq.

Its president, Lucas Arcilla, says the government ban could encourage others to go through illegal channels to leave. And if that happens, there could be more Filipinos ending up in the hands of Iraqi militants.

Besides, he said, it’s better for these Filipinos to be productive workers overseas than join the ranks of the more than five million unemployed in the country.

"Every morning, when I come here, I see a sign of desperation from these people. But every time they are called for an interview, I see a ray of hope growing in them," he said. — AFP