By JAY CHUA
NORMINA Pagabangan, 30, didn’t mind the daily backbreaking work of a domestic helper in Hama, Syria, despite having to settle for a salary of $125 a month instead of the $150 promised her by her recruiter.
She escaped from her employers and broke an arm in the process.
Pagabangan was one of the 261 Filipino workers flown in from Syria by the International Organization for Migration aboard a chartered Jordanian Aviation Airlines flight, which landed at the NAIA at 8 a.m. yesterday.
Aside from the toil, Pagabangan said she also experienced difficulty in concentrating on her work because of daily bombings and shootings since March 2011 when nationwide anti-government mass actions started.
Syrian forces, using tanks and bulldozers, have been demolishing houses in the Mesha Alarbeen district of the city of Hama.
Pagabangan said she had told her employers she wanted to return to the Philippines because she feared for her life, but her employers would not let her go saying the conflict would end soon.
Pagabangan said that one night when everybody was already asleep, she tied one end of a rope to a bedpost and slid three floors down to the ground. Halfway through, the rope broke. She fell and broke her right arm. It was in the hospital where she received the good news that her employers had allowed her to join the 260 repatriates being airlifted by IOM.
The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration head, Carmelita Dimzon, said the agency is ready to help the returning workers, including giving them P10,000 relief assistance.
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis said there are about 9,000 to 10,000 Filipinos in Syria, but not all of them want to come home.
About 1,500 are still waiting to be repatriated. When the number of workers at a safehouse in Damascus reaches about 300, the IOM will schedule an airlift to Manila, he said.
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