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By Go Bon Juan
Editor’s note: The Sixth Dr.
Jose P. Rizal Awards for Excellence awarding ceremony will be held
on June 14, 2008, 7 p.m., at the Kaisa-Angelo King Heritage Center
on Anda and Cabildo Streets, Intramuros, Manila.
Filipino workers are again
fleeing Lebanon, where a civil war has erupted once more. The
Philippine government shoulders the repatriation of overseas workers
caught in difficult situations like that in Lebanon.
Unknown to many, there were cases
before the war involving a number of Chinese in the Philippines who
were forced to return to China, not because of the war but purely
because of poverty they had encountered here.
Based on the Philippine-Chinese
Charitable Association Inc.’s report published in its 90th
anniversary yearbook (published in 1968), one of the services the
association provided at the time to the Chinese community was to
give free ship tickets to poor Chinese who wanted to go back to
China because they either failed in business or stayed jobless for a
long time.
The free tickets, however, were
limited only to Amoy (now called Xiamen) and Hong Kong.
Beneficiaries had to be guaranteed by members of the association who
contributed their monthly dues and were required to leave their
immigration certification of registration with the association.
And for those who wanted to
return to the Philippines and retrieve their immigration
certification of registration later, they had to pay back the
expenses the association had incurred for their ship tickets.
From 1934 to 1941, a total of
1,777 poor Chinese availed of free ship tickets. The breakdown:
1934
78
1935 154
1936 172
1937 85
1938 120
1939 112
1940 212
1941 144
In 1937, Japan invaded China, and
war broke out between the two countries. But from 1937 to 1941,
hundreds of poor Chinese in the Philippines still opted to return to
China, so one can just imagine how poor and difficult their
situation was here.
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