Posted on 11/09/2004 11:09:08 PM PST by weegie
Dubai: Manila will soon issue new passports stamped with the warning, “Not Valid for Iraq.” The move is intended to prevent workers from travelling to the war-torn country and falling prey to kidnappers, the Philippine envoy to the UAE said.
The warning will also be in Arabic to advise companies in the region not to send their Filipino staff to Iraq, Ambassador Libran Cabactulan told Gulf News.
“We are holding talks with companies and governments in the region,” he said.
He conceded that companies who wish to move their staff to Iraq “will do anything to get them there.”
He said Filipinos were not using the UAE as a springboard to get into Iraq. “It is not easy,” he said, explaining that the workers will first have to get an entry visa here and then exit out to Iraq.
“It is the companies that already have Filipinos on their staff who will deploy them to Iraq,” he said, adding that truck drivers in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are at risk.
There are 190,000 Filipinos in the UAE and about 850,000 in Saudi Arabia, the largest concentration of overseas workers in the region.
Cabactulan said Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo met the Filipino community in Dubai on Friday. He told them “the Philippine government will protect all Filipinos, whether legal or illegal, whether documented or undocumented”.
Romulo was commenting on the abduction of Filipinos Robert Tarongoy, a truck driver in Iraq, and Angelito Nayan, a UN employee, in Afghanistan.
Manila is taking “unilateral action” to secure the release of the hostages.
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