The government will monitor the conditions in Libya before issuing a repatriation order for the Filipino workers there, Malacañang said Thursday.
Presidential Spokesman Salvador Panelo said the Labor department was on top of the situation in Libya following the violent power struggles there.
“[Labor] Secretary [Silvestre] Bello III is handling the situation rightly, correctly. They [the Filipino workers] are saying they are not affected because [the war is] far from them,” Panelo said.
“So it depends on the situation. The government will monitor the situation first before we act.”
On Wednesday, Bello imposed a total deployment ban of Filipino workers bound for Libya to “ensure their safety and security and to avoid getting caught in the escalating violence” in Tripoli.
He said the order came upon the advice of the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Foreign Affairs had previously raised Alert Level III in Tripoli and some areas within a 100-kilometer radius of the capital, which is considered a voluntary repatriation phase.
Bello said the Labor department remained prepared for “any exigency of forced repatriation if the situation deteriorates,” adding the Philippine government, with the DFA, continued to assess the situation in Libya.
He said an augmentation team would be dispatched this week to Tripoli to ensure the welfare of the Filipino workers there.
As the tension escalates in Tripoli, reelectionist Senator Nancy Binay appealed to the government to activate emergency hotlines where to allow the workers’ families to contact them.
There are more than 1,000 registered Filipinos in Libya, but 90 percent of the foreign/migrant workers in the country do not have proper travel documents and seldom receive consular support.