Philippine government spends €1.4 million on Malta ship for evacuations

The Philippine government is spending millions of dollars to repatriate Filipinos in Libya amid refusal from many Filipinos to leave the war-torn country, Foreign Affairs secretary Albert del Rosario said Tuesday.

“The cost of the rented ship from Malta is €1.4 million,” del Rosario told reporters in an interview.

“We are still negotiating for a chartered flight and usually the cost of a full plane is $6,000 to $7,000 per head,” he said. “If you figure out your cost, it’s on the basis of a full plane load. We have no idea how many we are going to get on that plane.”

Del Rosario said that they are also paying for the accommodations of Filipinos who have left Libya by land into neighbouring Tunisia to escape the conflict.

The Maltese ship is expected to arrive in Libya by end of the week to accommodate 300 Filipinos in Benghazi and 400 in Misurata who have expressed their desire to be repatriated.

“These are people who have signified their desire [to be repatriated], we are not yet on the intent,” del Rosario said.

There were also 800 Filipinos who expressed their desire to be repatriated in Tripoli but since the Tunisian border had reopened Sunday, they could be taken out of Libya over land.

“It’s like dejà vu. In 2011, we engaged a 2,000-capacity ship for more than a million dollars and that was two years ago. Why did we get 2,000? Because the sign-up list was 2,300,” he said.

“When the ship got there, it was a beautiful day, we only got 700 on board that ship. But a couple of days later things went bad again and the Filipinos wanted another ship to get them out,” he said.

So far, only 938 Filipinos out of the 13,000 in Libya have returned to the Philippine through the DFA’s mandatory repatriation program.

DFA spokesman Charles Jose previously said that the sentiments of many overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) in Libya is that they have better chances of surviving the war than being jobless in the Philippines. “The usual reason we hear from them is that they would rather take the chance. They think they have greater chances of surviving the war than of surviving uncertainty [without jobs] here,” Jose said in a press briefing Monday.