Up to 24,000 repatriated Filipino workers stuck in quarantine limbo in Manila will be allowed to return home after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said it was “unacceptable” that it was taking so long to process their release. Thousands are aboard cruise ships off Manila Bay or in hotels and crowded health facilities, some growing frustrated at having tested negative for the coronavirus and completed the mandated 14-day quarantine – with at least one taking their own life, according to reports. Coronavirus threatens Philippines’ ‘economic lifeline’ of OFW remittances Overseas Filipino Workers, or OFWs, are breadwinners and a key support base for Duterte. Their more than US$30 billion of annual remittances is a driver of the Philippine economy , sustaining millions of family members. Duterte’s spokesman, Harry Roque, said on Monday that the president had ordered “all government resources and whatever means of transportation” be used to ensure that the repatriated OFWs can return home by the end of the week. The government has blamed the delays on a testing bottleneck, with Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello III telling a Senate hearing last week that OFWs only receive a coronavirus test after spending two weeks in quarantine, where they stay until they have received an official certificate with their test results. This has led to some returnees such as Mary Palmez Gutierrez, who arrived in Manila on May 4 after losing her job as a bartender/superviser on a cruise liner, spending weeks waiting to be released. ‘200 million for Duterte’s head’: Filipinos arrested for online threats She said “the inefficiency of how things are being handled” had frustrated her, as “everything is spontaneous [with] no concrete plan” and the people in charge seemingly “don’t have a proper system to follow”. “We can’t leave the premises of our hotel nor go outside of our room, we are to stay in our room at all times,” she said. Another OFW who gave his name as Michael said in a video he posted to Facebook on Friday how he and his fellow returnees who came as a group from the Middle East had been “groping in the dark” for 21 days. “We were given a hotline but when we called it the person who answered said they were not in charge of our problem and told us to call another agency, but they couldn’t give us the number,” he said. “The money we brought home is running out. Instead of bringing it home to our families, we’ll end up giving nothing because we’re spending it here.” With some quarantine periods stretching into the months, rather than weeks, concerns have also been raised for OFW’s mental health. Raffy Tima, a journalist and presenter for local network GMA News TV who has interviewed a number of the stranded workers, wrote on Twitter that some said they are experiencing depression from “the thought of not knowing when they can finally go home”. By Wednesday, the government is aiming to have processed 8,000 workers, Bello, the labour secretary told CNN Philippines, with the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration implementing an “e-ticket” scheme that allows quarantined workers to print out their own health certificates instead of having to wait to be handed the documents. Senator Richard Gordon, who also chairs the Philippine Red Cross, said that the printing of these certificates had been delayed because of “errors in encoding” OFW’s information submitted to the organisation by the coastguard, which is in charge of processing returnees. Given the deluge of repatriated workers, “the coastguard, they are really to be pitied”, Gordon said, adding that the Red Cross had tried to address the problem by fielding nearly 100 people “to correct the errors in encoding”. The government is braced for more workers to return because of job losses as the pandemic devastates economies worldwide. Carlito Galvez Jnr, who heads the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Diseases, told senators on May 20 that they were expecting 42,000 more OFWs to return home by June. More than 30,000 have already returned and 515 of 27,000 tested for coronavirus were positive as of May 20, Galvez said. The former military chief placed the total number of OFWs at 10.37 million, saying they “comprise 10 per cent” of the country’s population. The Philippines has reported more than 14,000 coronavirus cases, of which 868 were deaths. Additional reporting by Reuters Help us understand what you are interested in so that we can improve SCMP and provide a better experience for you. We would like to invite you to take this five-minute survey on how you engage with SCMP and the news.