|
CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga: Lack of international flight schedules at
Diosdado Macapagal International Airport (DMIA) here has stranded,
to date, some 10,000 overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) from Central
Luzon.
Pampanga First District Rep. Carmelo Lazatin
said on Tuesday that the “very limited international flights at
Clark are holding thousands of vacationing overseas workers, mostly
from the Middle East, from returning to their places of employment
due the ‘acute lack’ of flight schedules here.”
Major stakeholders in Central Luzon earlier
prepared a manifesto asking anew President Arroyo to allow unlimited
flights at the DMIA.
Lazatin, who heads the stakeholders, said that
his group would seek an audience with the President to present their
manifesto.
The authors of the manifesto said that thousands
of OFWs from Central Luzon have been “hamstrung by the severe lack
of return flights to their places of work.”
They added that thousands of already-recruited
OFWs have even lost their jobs abroad because of their failure to
return to their work places and their failure to arrive at their job
sites within the periods stipulated in their contracts.
The manifesto requesting for unlimited flights
at DMIA were signed by the congressman; Mario Lazatin, director of
Metro Angeles Chambers of Commerce and Industry; J. del Rosario,
president of Clark Investors and Locators Association; Frankie
Villanueva, president of Association of Business Chambers in Central
Luzon; James Dale, president of Hotel and Restaurants Association of
Pampanga; Freddie So, president of Angeles City Filipino-Chinese
Chamber of Commerce Inc.; and Mabalacat Mayor Marino Morales.
In their manifesto, the group wants the
President to schedule air talks so as to attract foreign air
carriers to operate in the country thus benefit the partners in
tourism, trade and overseas employment. It stressed the
liberalization of the Philippine aviation industry through the
passage of a law on developing all gateways outside Manila through
pocket open skies.
-- Mark Louie P. Roxas
|
