Multiple Pains

It’s painful enough to leave and be separated from one’s family. But for this country, whose number one export are its people, the pain of being separated from one’s family apparently is not factored in when our leaders report about how overseas Filipino workers have contributed to our economy.

To help our OFWs feel good, government leaders would often sing paeans to them, hailing OFWs as our “modern-day heroes” for their dollar remittances, which help sustain the Philippine economy.

Separation and the psychological impacts that children have to suffer when one or both of their parents have to work overseas are simply not considered. We have yet to learn about government studies on how children of OFWs are reeling from the impact of separation from their parents and how government is helping provide some kind of support system for these children. All we hear are reports about the rise and fall of dollar remittances from our OFWs.

The pain that OFWs and their families suffer is multiplied a hundred times over when tragedy strikes in the countries where OFWs work. The renewed violence in Israel and Lebanon, for example, is an added pain to about 30,000 OFWs there, most of them domestics. The families of OFWs in these strife-torn Middle East countries also have to suffer sleepless nights as they watch on TV how Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants exchange missile bombardments.

Adding to the anxieties of the families of our beleaguered OFWs in Israel and Lebanon is the news about our government’s lack of resources to evacuate our modern-day heroes. While other governments have evacuated their nationals as early as July 17, all our government can do is request the Vatican to offer its churches and other facilities as relocation sites for our besieged brothers and sisters. Our officials are hoping that Israeli forces won’t hit churches and other sacred places.

Our diplomats’ game plan is to first relocate our OFWs to some safe havens such as churches before evacuating them by land to Syria or by sea to Cyprus. Evacuation will begin only when the situation reaches “Alert Level 4,” which is perhaps when bombs are already raining on the heads of our OFWs.

Our foreign affairs officials and diplomats have also appealed to other governments to please let our OFWs hitch a ride with their cruise ships and aircrafts.

As an appreciation for the contribution of OFWs to our economy and as a deep concern for their lives and safety, can’t our government charter a plane or two of Philippine Airlines? It’s not enough to just sing songs of praises for our OFWs while their dollar remittances are helping nourish our ailing economy. It’s time we show we really care for our hardworking OFWs by bailing them out of Beirut and Israel! Such action can at least help ease the pain not only of the troubled OFWs but also of their families back home whose stomachs must have become acidic already from too much worrying.