TRIPOLI, Libya - Philippines Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Del Rosario said based on the feedback he had got from Filipino community leaders in Libya, most had opted to stay because they think they are better off.Filipinos in Libya are risking their lives with their decision to stay in the strife-torn North African country because they fear they will have no jobs if they return to the Philippines.
"Many want to go home, but they prefer to stay in Libya because there are no job opportunities in the Philippines," the official said.- Del Rosario, who visited Libya on March 22 to make a last call to Filipinos to avail of the government's repatriation programme, said Filipino community leaders told him most of those who opted to stay were promised pay increases.
Others were warned by their employers they would lose entitlement to gratuity pay if they did not finish their contracts. Most who opted to stay were nurses and other health workers. Del Rosario said one nurse told him people believed they were safe in Libya.- He quoted one nurse as saying: "Our employer promised to take care of us and told us that if the worse comes to worst, we will be housed in the hospital and provided with everything we need for free, on top of salary increase."
Del Rosario said one Filipino nursing professor teaching in a university in Benghazi said that they were asked to stay and would be paid their wages even if there are no classes. Another admitted that she could not readily give up a salary ranging between 4,500 and 6,000 Libyan dinars, or 160,000 pesos (Dh13,261) to 200,000 pesos (Dh17,000), roughly the equivalent of pay received by vice-presidents of multi-national corporations in the Philippines.
He said of 2,000 nurses with dependents in Libya, around 1,600 had decided to stay. Eight hundred of these nurses and dependents are in Tripoli.Del Rosario said rather than fearing for their life because of the reported fighting raging in parts of Libya, "Filipino workers are actually more concerned about the difficulty in remitting money to their family."
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