MANILA: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has given his government a week to process some 24,000 repatriated Filipino workers stuck for weeks on cruise ships or in coronavirus quarantine, so they can finally go home.
Thousands are aboard cruise vessels off Manila Bay or stuck in hotels and crowded health facilities, some growing frustrated having tested negative for the coronavirus and completed the mandated 14-day quarantine.
Overseas Filipino Workers, or OFWs, are breadwinners and a key support base of Duterte. Their more than $30 billion of annual remittances is a key driver of the Philippine economy, sustaining millions of family members.
“The president said they can use all government resources and whatever means of transportation — bus, airplane, ships — to bring the OFWs home,” Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, said on Monday.
The government is braced for hundreds of thousands more workers to return due to job losses as the coronavirus devastates economies worldwide. It has blamed the delays on a testing bottleneck.
The cruise ship cluster off Manila Bay numbered 29 vessels on Monday, none with passengers aboard. They contain thousands of Filipino crew still awaiting coronavirus tests, many no longer receiving salaries and venting frustrations having already met conditions for release.
Crew reached by Reuters said information was scarce and prolonged isolation was taking a toll on their mental and emotional health.
Jex Bañega, a receptionist on Carnival Corp’s Pacific Explorer, said he was being well cared for, but after 35 days of quarantine, his cabin felt more like prison cell.
“We’re only thinking of going home to our families. The comfort of our homes is different,” Banega said
More than 30,000 overseas Filipinos have returned home and 515 of 27,000 tested for coronavirus were positive as of May 20, authorities said. The Philippines has over 14,000 cases, of which 868 were deaths.
Philippine President Duterte answers call of workers under COVID-19 quarantine eager to go home
https://arab.news/p575j
Philippine President Duterte answers call of workers under COVID-19 quarantine eager to go home
- Thousands are aboard cruise vessels off Manila Bay or stuck in hotels and crowded health facilities
- The government is braced for hundreds of thousands more workers to return due to job losses as the coronavirus devastates economies worldwide
Protesters try to attack driver after truck speeds through anti-Iran demonstration in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES: Los Angeles police responded Sunday after somebody drove a U-Haul box truck down a street crowded with marchers demonstrating in support of the Iranian people, causing protesters to scramble out of the way and then run after the speeding vehicle to try to attack the driver.
The U-Haul truck, with its side mirrors shattered, was stopped several blocks away and surrounded by police cars. ABC7 news helicopter footage showed officers keeping the crowd at bay as demonstrators swarmed the truck, throwing punches at the driver and thrusting flagpoles through the driver’s side window.
The police department confirmed its officers were on the scene but didn’t immediately say if anyone was arrested.
Two people were evaluated by paramedics and both declined treatment, the Los Angeles Fire Department said.
Several hundred people had gathered Sunday afternoon in the Westwood neighborhood to protest against the Iranian theocracy. The LA police department eventually issued a dispersal order, and by 5 p.m. only about a hundred protesters were still at the scene, ABC7 reported.
Activists say a crackdown on nationwide protests in Iran has killed more than 530 people. Protesters flooded the streets in Iran’s capital of Tehran and its second-largest city again Sunday.
