THE Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) yesterday said it expects Filipinos in quake-hit Myanmar to request repatriation to Manila, as authorities are still searching for those missing and buried under the rubble, including four Filipinos in the city of Mandalay.
In Myanmar, survivors were pulled out of rubble while in Bangkok, which was also hit by the quake, signs of life were detected in the ruins of a skyscraper, as efforts intensified to find people trapped three days after the massive earthquake that killed around 2,000.
Rescuers freed four people, including a pregnant woman and a girl, from collapsed buildings in Mandalay, the city in central Myanmar near the epicenter of Friday’s 7.7-magnitude earthquake, China’s Xinhua news agency reported.
Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo Jose de Vega said the department expects repatriation requests because some of the Filipinos lost their jobs due to the earthquake.
There are 811 Filipinos living and working in Myanmar, according to the DFA, with 128 living in Mandalay which is near the epicenter of the quake.
“In Myanmar, there will probably be requests for repatriation because there are Filipinos who lost their jobs,” De Vega said in Filipino in an interview with GMA7.
He said this is similar to what happened after a strong earthquake hit Turkey in 2023, with some Filipinos also requesting the government for repatriation.
Vega said the Philippine Embassy is coordinating with the Filipino community in Myanmar and is ready to provide assistance, including for repatriation requests.
De Vega said repatriated Filipinos will undergo reintegration program upon arrival in the country.
De Vega said the main focus of the embassy now is to account for the four missing Filipinos in Mandalay.
The embassy, he added, is also checking on Filipinos in Yangon and in Myanmar’s administrative capital city of Naypyidaw.
On Sunday night, the embassy said aside from the four missing Filipinos, it is also looking at the welfare of three other Filipinos in Mandalay.
The embassy has yet to provide an update on the search for the missing Filipinos as of press time.
A Filipino working as a teacher in Myanmar appealed to the Philippine government to prioritize search operations for the four missing.
“Three who are missing, including a couple and a PE teacher, were my colleagues. The couple were also my close friends since we belong to the same batch and we are all from Negros,” teacher “Dan” said in an interview with radio dzBB.
He said he is also a frequent visitor to the unit occupied by the couple in the building in Mandalay that collapsed due to the quake.
Philippine Embassy chargé d’affaires Angelito Nayan said a five-member consular team is on its way to Mandalay to help search for the four Filipinos.
CIVIL WAR
A civil war in Myanmar, where a military junta seized power in a coup in 2021, was complicating efforts to reach those injured and made homeless by Myanmar’s biggest quake in a century.
“Access to all victims is an issue … given the conflict situation. There are a lot of security issues to access some areas across the front lines in particular,” Arnaud de Baecque, resident representative of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Myanmar, told Reuters.
One rebel group said Myanmar’s ruling military was still conducting airstrikes on villages in the aftermath of the quake, and Singapore’s foreign minister called for an immediate ceasefire to help relief efforts.
In the Thai capital Bangkok, rescuers pulled out another body from the rubble of an under-construction skyscraper that collapsed in the quake, bringing the death toll from the building collapse to 12, with a total of 19 dead across Thailand and 75 still missing at the building site.
Scanning machines and sniffer dogs were deployed at the site and Bangkok’s Deputy Governor Tavida Kamolvej said rescuers were urgently working out how to access an area where signs of life had been detected, three days on from the quake.
Realistic chances of survival diminish after 72 hours, she said, adding: “We have to speed up. We’re not going to stop even after 72 hours.”
In Myanmar, state media said at least 1,700 people have been confirmed dead as of Sunday and that the military government had declared a week-long mourning period from Monday. The Wall Street Journal, citing the junta, reported the death toll had reached 2,028 in Myanmar.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the new death toll. Media access has been restricted in the country since the junta took power. Junta chief General Min Aung Hlaing warned at the weekend that the number of fatalities could rise.
China, India and Thailand are among Myanmar’s neighbors that have sent relief materials and teams, along with aid and personnel from Malaysia, Singapore and Russia.
“It doesn’t matter how long we work. The most important thing is that we can bring hope to the local people,” said Yue Xin, head of the China Search and Rescue Team that pulled people out of the rubble in Mandalay, Xinhua reported.
The United Nations said it was rushing relief supplies to survivors in central Myanmar.
“Our teams in Mandalay are joining efforts to scale up the humanitarian response despite going through the trauma themselves,” said Noriko Takagi, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Myanmar.
The United States pledged $2 million in aid “through Myanmar-based humanitarian assistance organizations”. It said in a statement that an emergency response team from USAID, which is undergoing massive cuts under the Trump administration, is deploying to Myanmar.
The quake devastation has piled more misery on Myanmar, already in chaos from a civil war that grew after the elected government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted by the military.
Critical infrastructure – including bridges, highways, airports and railways – across the country of 55 million lie damaged, slowing humanitarian efforts while the conflict that has battered the economy, displaced over 3.5 million people and debilitated the health system, rages on.
“We see devastated communities across the country in Mandalay and (the capital) Naypyidaw in particular…People are still sleeping outside, can’t access their homes, so they don’t have capacity to cook their meals, said the ICRC’s de Baecque.
“All the health structures that have been damaged… are not delivering what they were doing in terms of healthcare and have a difficulty to absorb extra needs.” — With Reuters
