By Tara Yap ILOILO CITY – The Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) has been slammed for allowing repatriated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to come home to Iloilo even after one of them reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The OFWs who arrived in Iloilo City last April 9, 2020. One of them tested positive for COVID-19. (Photo via Tara Yap / MANILA BULLETIN) “I was terribly mad at OWWA for its inability to follow protocol. The national government has to know this so that it won’t happen again,” an irate Mayor Jerry Treñas of Iloilo City said in a Monday press conference. Treñas confirmed that the 44-year-old man, listed by the Department of Health (DOH) as the 40th COVID-19 positive case in Western Visayas region, was indeed one of 22 OFWs who arrived here last April 9 on a vessel from Cebu. An earlier rapid test conducted by the Iloilo City Health Office found two other OFWs positive, but these have not yet been confirmed by DOH. “We also want them to be with their families, but our safety should not be sacrificed. They should have endured and contained it, security first,” emphasized Treñas. To recall, OWWA initiated the repatriation of the 22 stranded OFWs, who were from Iloilo City, towns in Iloilo province and Guimaras province, with the assistance of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD). The OFWs, who were asymptomatic, were initially cleared by the Cebu City Health Department to undergo mandatory 14-day quarantine upon arrival in the country. But by the time they arrived in Iloilo, the DOH-licensed testing center found one of them positive for COVID-19. “The OFWs should have been tested before going home, and OWWA should have sent the list of OFWs a week before. We could have saved our frontliners and the rest of their fellow passengers from the risk,” added Treñas. Treñas also lamented the local government was only informed the night before about the arrival of the OFWs, and the responsibility of handling them became the city’s responsibility, including providing the isolation area for another round of quarantine. According to Treñas, the laboratory-confirmed result of the 44-year-old OFW has compromised around 90 people. It includes staff of the Iloilo City Health Office, Public Safety and Transportation Management Office (PTSMO), the crew of the vessel, and the drivers of the vehicle that transported the OFWs. Meanwhile, Treñas will no longer allow passage of OFWs arriving in Iloilo City. Another batch is supposed to arrive on Tuesday, April 14.