ZAMBOANGA CITY—The families of close to 50 overseas Filipino workers from the Zamboanga Peninsula who were recently stranded in Saudi Arabia after their companies reportedly closed shop were provided with funding assistance by the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration, a welfare officer said.
OWWA Region IX family welfare officer Khalil Isser Lorena said the agency will give P20,000 (1,599 Rial) to each of the affected OFWs at the jobsite and another P20,000 to each of the repatriated employees.
Lorena told media that each of the affected workers’ local families will also be given with P6,000 cash assistance, and added that the fund aid “is given through the Relief Assistance Program (RAP),” OWWA’s arm for crisis intervention.
The RAP, she explained, is designed “to enable affected OFWs and their families to cope with economic and social adjustments about the loss of their jobs in the Middle East.”
According to Lorena, hundreds of OFWs from different places in the Philippines became jobless after their companies reportedly shut down “after incurring financial difficulties,” with many of them still not getting their salaries.
Not a few of them were earlier reported to have picked food from garbage drums to ease their hunger, which later prompted the Department of Foreign Affairs to send aircraft to fly them back home.
Those who lost their jobs, Lorena said, included engineers, office personnel, and construction workers who came from Zamboanga City and other parts of Region IX.