MANILA: A day after more than 400 overseas Filipino workers (OFW) were prevented from leaving for Saudi Arabia due to ambiguity over who would bear the costs for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) tests and quarantine measures upon their arrival in the Kingdom, the Philippine government said on Saturday that the deployments had been resumed.
“The temporary suspension of deployment to the Kingdom is hereby lifted,” Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said in a statement.
He added that the Saudi government had assured the Philippines that “foreign employers and agencies will shoulder the costs of institutional quarantine and other COVID-19 protocols upon arrival in the KSA.”