THE government will continue to fund the quarantine and screening process for incoming overseas Filipino workers, presidential spokesman Harry Roque said yesterday as he disclosed that the Department of Budget and Management is now looking for funds to replenish the depleted budget of the Overseas Welfare Workers Administration (OWWA).
Roque said Budget Secretary Wendel Avisado has assured President Duterte that the DBM would come up with the P9.8 billion needed to sustain the two-week state facility-based quarantine of returning OFWs.
The commitment, he said, was made by Avisado during the meeting of members of the Cabinet and the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases (IATF) with the President on Wednesday night.
The President, in his public address aired on Wednesday night, said he called for the special meeting to address the “complain” of Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III that the OWWA no longer has enough funds to continue to support the 14-day quarantine of returning OFWs.
Bello has asked the IATF to reduce the quarantine period to reduce OWWA’s operating expenses, which is now down to P1.4 billion as of April 16. The budget is enough until mid-May this year.
All OFWs who return to the country are tested on the fifth day after their arrival and are required to complete the mandatory 14-day quarantine. Under the current setup, OWWA pays for the board and lodging of returning OFWs in a government-accredited hotel, the cost of RT PCR testing, and the transportation expenses to their destination.
In response to Bello’s request, members of the IATF Technical Advisory Group recommended that the COVID test be done on the sixth or seventh day of quarantine, and to allow the OFWs who would test negative or those who remain asymptomatic to already go home and continue the remainder of their quarantine either at home, with the strict supervision of the local government unit (LGU), or stay in an LGU-based facility.
Another recommendation was to skip the COVID-19 test and to just complete the 14-day quarantine in the government facility.
President Duterte has said that he was not comfortable relaxing the quarantine period especially with the presence of new COVID-19 virus variants, and the lower chance that OFWs would strictly observe their remaining quarantine at home.
Health experts have also insisted that the 14-day period is the most ideal given that the incubation of the virus usually takes five to seven days, and also due to the presence of more infectious new variants.
