DOLE PR
Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III on Sunday said the labor department will submit to the Inter Agency Task Force the information it is gathering from its tracking system for all overseas Filipino workers intending to return to the country.
DOLE has developed the OFW Assistance Information System (OASIS) to facilitate an orderly and smooth repatriation, and assistance to the huge number of returning OFWs due to the Covid 19 pandemic.
“OASIS will be able to generate vital information that will help the IATF pre-position government resources and needed assistance for our repatriated OFWs,” Bello said.
He said the repatriation tracker will facilitate the identification and classification of arriving OFWs in a number of ways to facilitate organized arrival at the airport, efficient swab testing, and rapid pick up and transport to their respective hotels and homes and other necessary processes.
The system, run by the DOLE Command Center, also serves as a reliable database for OFWs displaced by the pandemic to help the government determine and immediately provide the kind of support they need once they land at the country’s ports.
Knowing the airlines the OFWs used, their health condition, local addresses and other relevant data in the tracker will help government dispense assistance they need.
To be tracked, an OFW bound for home is requested to register online with
OASIS through oasis.owwa.gov.ph.
Meanwhile, DOLE reported that it has extended assistance to 189,153 OFWs under its Abot Kamay ang Pagtulong (AKAP) program, disbursing some P1.6 billion in funds.
The program, one-time cash assistance of $200 or P10,000, has so far received 508,527 applications from onsite and repatriated OFWs, both land- and sea-based, as of Sunday, June 14.
