(Eagle News)–Over 40 distressed Filipinos repatriated from Lebanon arrived on Wednesday, Feb. 5.
The 31 females and 15 minors were welcomed by the Department of Foreign Affairs, through the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs, together with the Inter-agency Council against Trafficking and its member-agencies.
With their repatriation, the total number of repatriated Filipinos from Lebanon has now reached 163 since the Voluntary Mass Repatriation Program (VMRP) at the Philippine Embassy in Beirut started in December 2019.
Under the program, the DFA paid for the repatriates’ airfare to Manila and to their respective provinces and immigration penalties.
The department also secured their exit visas, and sheltered them in a holding facility while their cases were being resolved at the Lebanese Immigration Office.
An Alert Level 2 or the restriction phase was raised over Lebanon on January 9, “in view of the mass repatriation of overseas Filipinos due to the economic crisis in the country and in order to strengthen the enforcement of the ban on the deployment of new workers to Lebanon,” the DFA said.
