Body of OFW arrives home in Apo Is

DUMAGUETE CITY, Philippines  – Nearly five months after he was first reported dead last December in South Korea, the body of Lauro Suan Alaton, an overseas Filipino worker (OFW) from Apo Island in Negros Oriental, has finally been returned to his family.

The frozen body of 39-year-old Lauro arrived in Manila from South Korea on Wednesday and was transported on board a commercial airliner to Dumaguete on Thursday, according to Ronald, brother of the deceased OFW.

Lauro’s remains was brought to Apo Island on Friday, a day after it had to be delivered to a funeral parlor in Bacong town, about 20 minutes drive south of this capital, to allow the body to thaw before it could be transferred to a coffin, said Ronald.

Lauro was first reported to have died while on board the cargo ship M/V Chang Tai Hong sometime in early December in South Korea. Initial reports said he succumbed to some kind of illness and was brought to a hospital in Korea.

Reports reaching the family in Apo Island were sketchy, causing family members to get apprehensive even as the recruitment agency in Manila who had hired Alaton could also not give enough details as to the circumstances surrounding his death.

Ronald, in a telephone interview, quoted the recruitment agency that it took months before the body could be transported to Negros Oriental due to tedious paperwork.

During those months, the family was told that Lauro’s body was kept refrigerated on board the cargo ship that was flying the South Korean flag, and was brought to other ports of call while the required documents for its repatriation to the Philippines were still facilitated, said Ronald.

Eleonor, the wife of the late Lauro, said in a telephone interview Friday that the family will be requesting for an autopsy next week before he will be laid to rest on May 6 to clear things and to make sure that her husband had, indeed died of natural cause, as stated in his death certificate.

While the death certificate shows that the manner of death was natural and the cause of death was sudden immediate cardiac arrest, family members of Lauro were still entertaining some unanswered questions which they believed could be answered only through an autopsy.  (FREEMAN)