Repatriation of OFWs is a national obligation

IT is commendable and it is fitting that both the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) and the Department of Labor (DoLE) are rising to the challenge of bringing home to safety thousands of our overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), who have been stricken by the pandemic or have been stranded in foreign lands.

This reverse diaspora dramatizes in equal measure, first, the lifeline for the nation that our OFW sector has provided our country and our people over the past decades and, second, the massive dislocation and ordeal that the Covid-19 pandemic has wrought on our overseas worker community, which accounts for some 10 million Filipinos at any given time.