Govt stumped on Iraq hostage

By CHER JIMENEZ and MANUEL CAYON
TODAY Reporters


The Philippine government remains clueless on the whereabouts of Filipino worker Robert Tarongoy who was abducted by a still-unidentified group in Iraq on Monday.


Marianito Roque, chief of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) said the abductors of Tarongoy, a 31-year-old accountant working with an American firm in Baghdad, have yet to establish communication with government negotiators.


Tarongoy, an undocumented Filipino worker in Iraq, was taken hostage by Iraqi militants along with three other workers at the compound of the Saudi Arabian Trading Construction Co. (SATCO), a food catering company supplying food to American soldiers in Baghdad.


He was hired by the company in July without the knowledge of his family, said his wife Ivy, who flew from their hometown of Davao to speak with government officials tracking her husband.


Roque said even if Tarongoy defied the government’s deployment ban to Iraq, the Arroyo administration would still do everything to “bring him home alive.”


“International convention calls for us to assist our citizens [abroad] no matter what,” said Roque.


Tarongoy is one of the 800 Filipino workers working illegally in Iraq, with 200 of them employed outside of US camps Anaconda and Victory.


As three mutilated bodies were found in Baghdad’s Greenzone Wednesday, Philippine diplomatic officials still held high hopes that Tarongoy is still alive and would soon be released.


Philippine Chargé d’Affaires to Iraq Eric Endaya said in a radio interview: “We received a word that the Iraqi and American officials have a list of possible suspects and we are doing our best to contact these officials.”


Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo earlier instructed Endaya to coordinate with Iraqi officials.


Romulo is now in Abu Dhabi to attend the funeral service for the late United Arab Emirates president Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahayan.


While in Abu Dhabi, Romulo will meet with heads of the Philippine diplomatic posts in the Middle East to strengthen ways to prevent Filipino workers from crossing borders over to Iraq.


In Davao City, relatives of Tarongoy wondered aloud whether the “government [will] help us or not because our brother is undocumented?”


Lilibeth Tarongoy, 24, said the family was bothered by the concern raised by the government about how her brother sneaked into Iraq.


Tarongoy said the government “should know” that her brother was assisted by a contracting agency, the JS Contractor, “which is under [license and monitoring of] the POEA [Philippine Overseas Employment Agency].


Several nongovernment organizations convinced the family to open up to news organizations “to ensure that Robert would have full assistance of the government as contained in the law”, said Sr. Mary Celine Cahanding, executive director of the archdiocese-based Center for Overseas Workers (COW).


The COW has worked with the Davao City OFW Office, a unit of the city government created only in April this year to document all OFWs based here. The COW has also coordinated with Migrante International to assist the family. With E. Torres