Raring to return to Iraq Niña Catherine Calleja Philippine Daily Inquirer
March 17, 2009
ALTHOUGH the land may have been persistently pounded by suicide bombings and armed clashes, Iraq is still green pasture to Roland Nuquid and other Filipinos seeking jobs overseas.
“Kung doon sa Iraq kalaban mo giyera, dito naman kalaban mo gutom (In Iraq, there’s a war, but here, we are also at war—with hunger),” Nuquid says.
The 34-year-old maintenance technician had worked in a subcontracting company at Camp Anaconda, a large American base in Balad, Iraq. Feeling the stress of a 12-hour duty daily, seven days a week, for three and a half years and missing his family, he returned to the Philippines even before his contract expired.
Higher pay
Now that his savings are drying up and he is experiencing difficulty in going into business, Nuguid longs for his old job, praying that the government will soon lift the ban on the deployment of OFWs in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
Asked why he still wants to work in Iraq, considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world, Nuquid quipped in Filipino: “If I had better choices, I wouldn’t.”
“We are always told that it is easy to find opportunities abroad. Yes, but before we are able to leave and get a job, we have to face tremendous hurdles,” he said. “We are forced to spend big money for agencies, yet we are unsure if we will get hired.”
He said he did not want to compete with other professionals with diplomas out there to secure a good job.
“Iraq has job opportunities despite the war, and the pay is higher,” Nuguid said. He had been earning $800 monthly, or roughly P36,000 from his last job there.
Taiwan trip
Nuguid had looked forward to working abroad since his parents told him they could no longer financially support the computer programming course he took after high school.
Through a job placement agency, he went to Taiwan in 1994 and worked in an auto assembly line for five years. He was able to save enough money to buy a Toyota Tamaraw FX van.
When he returned to the Philippines, Nuguid chose to stay and make a living by driving his van from his hometown in Baliwag, Bulacan, to Manila, and back.
But Nuguid was not earning enough to pay for fuel, repair and traffic fines, so he sold his FX van. “Yumaman lang ako sa utang (I only became rich in debts),” he said.
He used the payment for his van for the processing of his travel documents.
In 2005, he left his wife and two daughters, and arrived in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates on a tourist visa. Although he had no work permit, he crossed the border from Dubai to Iraq and found a job. The ban on Filipino workers there had yet to be enforced at the time.
Nuguid said his workplace, Camp Anaconda, is a protected dome with high walls and towers, and US soldiers monitoring movements outside.
Mortar shelling and bombing became part of the workers’ daily lives, occurring three or four times a week, he said. A wailing siren and an announcement of “Incoming!” meant that mortar shells were being fired followed by a series of explosions.
“In six seconds, we had to look for cover or lie on the ground,” Nuguid recalled.
The people, he said, had no idea where the bomb would hit, but luckily, it often exploded without casualties, he said. At one time, he said, a bomb hit a vacant lot just beside a group of 20 people.
Getting used to it
When a Filipino colleague died after being hit in the barracks, however, the workers gave their resignation letters the next day. But after several months, when the situation became somewhat tolerable, they withdrew their resignations.
“Things changed, bombing only happened once every two weeks,” he said.
Asked if he was not afraid at all, he said, the workers got used to it. One time, he said, he would bike though a signal of mortars coming was up.
In 2007, the war seemed to have stopped for months. Fewer red alerts, bombings and casualties prompted him to renew his contract.
Nuquid insisted that Iraq was not exactly the same image portrayed on TV. “Of course, the media always highlight the bombings,” he said.
Missing his family
But after five months, he decided to go home because he felt he needed a rest and was missing his family.
“We can’t have a day of rest because we were illegals,” he said.
“If we were not illegals, our employers would have treated us like the other nationals in the camp,” he said. He and his fellow Filipinos could not complain and speak against their employer because a wrong move could lead to retrenchment and repatriation.
“They would not give us permanent work,” he said. He recounted a time when a multinational company offered him and other Filipinos regular positions with an average monthly salary of $4,000. But the company backed off when they learned about the OFW ban in Iraq.
War in Iraq
The ban began in 2005 at the height of fighting between Iraqi militants and US troops. The Philippine government marked passports disallowing entry to all parts of Iraq.
But Nuquid said all of the Filipino workers in Iraq and those who were repatriated were clamoring for a selective ban. “There are parts of Iraq which are safe,” he said.
Since 2007, petition letters have been sent to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Vice President Noli de Castro. All of the OFWs he knew signed but the efforts went for naught, Nuquid said. “Nothing happened after. We are still not allowed to go back.”
Nuquid has not stopped looking for jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan. But all of his applications are put on hold until Ms Arroyo’s pronouncement of the lifting or modification of the ban.
He said he hoped that work for the repatriated OFWs would resume and the ban would soon be lifted. He could endure the job, he said, but he knew things could get better if there was no ban.
