CIMATU ON 'ASSESSMENT SECURITY' MISSION TO IRAQ, LEBANON AND NIGERIA-- VP NOLI
February 6, 2009

Vice President and presidential adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) Noli “Kabayan” De Castro said yesterday that the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)-created assessment team led by Ambassador Roy Cimatu will leave for 3 countries where there are existing deployment bans issued by the government.

After a meeting with Undersecretary Esteban Conejos and Ambassador Cimatu yesterday, De Castro revealed that the countries of Iraq, Lebanon and Nigeria will be reassessed on security risk, whether it will be safe for OFWs to be deployed in said countries.

“What I proposed to DFA and Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) was for a selective ban on these countries. We only seek to lift the ban in areas where there are concentration of work activities, while those areas considered still as high risk zone, the ban shall remain,” De Castro said.

De Castro pointed out that in the mentioned countries, there are areas considered as centers of economic activities and where security situation was reported to have normalized. At present, DOLE also maintains a ban on deployment against the countries of Jordan and Afghanistan.

Earlier the Vice President met with the Iraqi delegation in which the Iraqi Minister of Construction and Housing Bayan Mohammed relayed that over 10 million new job opportunities are available in Iraq.

“We seek to lift the deployment bans on these countries in order to widen our overseas employment market in the light of the global economic crisis besetting us. But of course, the safety and welfare of our OFWs far outweigh the economic effects that is why the decision of lifting the ban will be exhaustively and carefully studied,” De Castro said.

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