Some 1,500 Filipino workers inside American military bases in Afghanistan refused to heed the call Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to consider returning to the country due to the ongoing violence there.
Foreign Secretary Alan Peter S. Cayetano this week said “the Embassy is ready to repatriate those [who are] willing to go [back] home.”
He based his assessment on the situation in Afghanistan on Ambassador to Islamabad Daniel Espiritu’s warning of “violent and frequent attacks across Afghanistan by both the Islamic State and the Taliban.”
Ambassador Espiritu said that, based on the records of the nongovernment Civilian Protection Advocacy Group in Kabul, the number of civilian casualties in July alone has reached 545, with 232 dead and 313 wounded.
However, the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Afghanistan said they remain “happy” working inside the safe confines of the US bases.
“Most of us are in agreement that the US bases are much safer than the streets of Metro Manila with daylight holdup, bag snatching, drug-bust operations and the horrendous traffic,” some Afghanistan-based OFWs were quoted as saying.
The OFWs were recruited by international contractors for the maintenance and logistics supply of the US troops stationed in Bagram and Kandahar military airfields, according to recruitment consultant Manny Geslani. He said there was a sharp drop of OFW hiring by the United States in Afghanistan, “from a high of 7,000 from 2011 to 2014 until former US President Barrack Obama ordered the pullout of over 150,000 US military troops.”