Tabuk OFW regrets travel ban to Libya

By Estanislao Albano, Jr.


TABUK CITY, Kalinga– Robert Guinaban, 41, one of the OFWs from this city who fled Libya in March as the unrest there mounted, rues the travel ban imposed by the government on that strife-torn country.
That’s after fellow OFWs who opted to stick it out in Libya recently posted in the Facebook social networking site that “we can now go back provided we pay own air fare.”
Guinaban said that he is presently trying to verify the information with the recruitment agency which facilitated the deployment of the latest batch of Filipino nurses to the Tripoli Medical Center (TMC) where he worked as medical technologist in the last eight years.
Guinaban regrets that he cannot go back to Tripoli because he already knows the culture in that country and, on the other hand, if he is fortunate enough to land a job in another country, he will have “to go back to zero.”
He was one of the job seekers who attended the jobs fair held byTabuk City in cooperation with the Department of Labor and Employment last May 6.
He applied for a medical technologist position in Saudi Arabia.
Guinaban who used to work at the Kalinga Provincial Hospital before going abroad in 2002 said that it was hard to leave the TMC, a government-owned hospital, as they were treated well by the management. He added that at one point, there were around a thousand Filipino medical workers in the hospital.
As the conflict escalated and foreign nationals started fleeing the country, the management assured them that they are safe in Tripoli but at the same time, the Philippine Embassy told them that the situation was getting worse and that they should leave via Tunisia.
At that time, they already heard of OFWs walking in the desert as the vehicles they were supposed to use were destroyed by marauders and also of OFWs who were turned back at the Tunisian border because they did not have travel documents.
In the first week of March, the TMC doctors met with them again and repeated their assurance no harm will befall them but this was being belied by the increasing explosions they heard around the city and more so by the increasing number of injured and dead being brought to the hospital.
“During the height of the conflict, the daily average of dead brought to the hospital was 10 to 15 and there was even one time when there was a clash that 25 dead people were brought to the hospital,” Guinaban recalled.
“As the conflict did not show signs of easing, most of us finally decided to leave. We could not take a gamble because we have families. Those who decided to stay are mostly single,” Guinaban said.
As of this writing there are still five OFWs from this province in Tripoli, four of them in the TMC.
Guinaban related that they were fetched from the TMC by buses hired by the Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration (OWWA) and brought to the Philippine Community School in Tripoli where they stayed for two days.
They were then brought to the port where they boarded the ship Endeavor Lines which took them to Crete, Greece where they were accommodated in a resort.
After three days, they were fetched by Philippine Air Lines planes and they finally arrived in the country on March 10.
According to the Tabuk City Public Employment Services Office, 276 of the 279 job seekers who participated in the May 6 jobs fair passed the initial screening and were told by the eight recruitment agencies which took part in the activity to wait for their call for further interview.
Tabuk City is conducting jobs fairs regularly as part of its program to assist constituents in finding employment here or abroad.**