Filipino overseas workers are being deployed in Iraq in violation of the continuing ban, the country’s special envoy to the Middle East Ambassador Roy Cimatu said Sept. 20. Cimatu told a Senate hearing that 6,647 Filipino migrant workers are still in Iraq amid offers from the Philippine government to repatriate them. Cimatu said Filipino workers are being brought to Iraq through Dubai and Kuwait with their consent accompanied by their employers using chartered planes.

Cimatu revealed Filipino workers whose passports are stamped ‘Not Valid for Travel to Iraq’ can still pass through immigration and enter Iraq upon facilitation of their employers. Cimatu reiterated the report of 51 Filipinos kidnapped and smuggled into Iraq on March 22, 2006 was not true. He said only 40 workers were actually brought in to Iraq, 11 of whom were Filipinos. Ruperto Mirhan, an engineer who worked inside the Green Zone in Baghdad occupied by the American forces, said most Filipinos were informed of the plans to bring them to the war-torn country even before leaving the Philippines for Kuwait or Dubai.