About 200 Saudi Arabia-bound overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were able to board their Philippine Airlines flight on Tuesday following the lifting of a temporary suspension of deployment order issued by the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) on May 30.
The departing OFWs were made to comply with strict protocols related to Covid-19 test, including the possession of Overseas Employment Certification (OEC), visas and RT-PCR negative test results issued within the last 72 hours.
“We issue them boarding passes if there are available seats on a first come, first serve basis but we prioritized OFWs with confirmed booking for the day,” said an employee who asked not to be named.
The A330-300 passenger airplane carrying the OFWs has a maximum seating capacity of 450 but PAL said it did not fly on full capacity to allow social distancing in the aircraft.
Meanwhile, many of the estimated 500 OFWs bound for Saudi Arabia that were offloaded by the DOLE order remain stuck in Manila.
They were quarantined in government-approved hotels but are reportedly frustrated that they are unable to take a flight to Saudi Arabia because most of the flights are fully booked for the next few weeks.
PAL has limited flights to the kingdom because of the daily 2,000-passenger cap arriving at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.
The carrier is limited to bring in a total of 640 passengers daily from the US and the Middle East
PAL spokesman Cielo Villaluna said they operate five flights to Dammam and six flights to Riyadh every week, while there’s only one flight to Doha and Dubai once a week.
“It is important for the government to consider increasing the number of allowable arrivals due to the great inconvenience to returning Filipinos and OFWs caused by flight cancellations,” Villaluna said.
PAL said OFWs who were unable to board their flights to Saudi Arabia due to DOLE travel ban last week may rebook to the next available flights with rebooking service fees waived.
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