ZAMBOANGA CITY: Mayor Maria Isabelle Climaco-Salazar no longer wishes to see her city as a receiving end for returning Filipinos (ROFs) from neighbouring Sabah.
She has recently urged the National Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging and Infectious Disease (NIATF-EID) to stop making Zamboanga as point of referral for Filipino deportees from Sabah.
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“The national government should establish facilities in the provinces of Tawi Tawi and Sulu for ROFs instead of sending them to my city,” Salazar told reporters.
She said the appointed Shipping Line company tasked to ferry the deportees should prepare a list of the passengers and drop them at their places of origin.
In her proposal, the Mayor said ROFs who are non-residents of the city might be accepted only if they would exit the place within three to five days.
Last year, NIATF-EID chief implementer, Secretary Carlito Galvez Jr, said the Mayor volunteered to make the city as a transit area for ROFs from Malaysia.
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However, Salazar said she has since changed her mind out of concern that the new United Kingdom Covid-19 variant has reached Malaysia.
She noted that the Malaysian Government has scheduled the deportation of more than 5,000 deportees, most of whom would be transiting here.
Meanwhile, the Malaysian Security Council (MKN) has yet to make any announcement regarding the resumption of Filipino deportation exercise from Sandakan to Zamboanga City.
MKN suspended all scheduled deportation exercises to Philippines since late December following the reported rise of Covid-19 cases in Sabah.
