GMA orders DFA to help Esto’s family

10/31/2009

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has ordered the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to facilitate the return home of the body of Filipino election volunteer Jossie Esto, a Filipina electoral outreach and training coordinator working in Afghanistan, who was one of those killed on Wednesday in a terrorist attack in the capital of Kabul.

In a press briefing, Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said the President also asked DFA to see what it could do for Esto’s family.

The government had earlier condemned the recent Kabul attack which also killed four of Esto’s co-workers in the United Nations Volunteers Program.

Remonde added that given the precarious situation volunteers such as Esto were in, the Arroyo could only hope that other Filipinos in the same area would take care of themselves.

“We are in touch with the Afghan government which we have very good relations with. (We thus expect) they (Afghan officials) will do everything to ensure the safety of Filipinos in the area,” Remonde said.

Esto, 40, was killed when Taliban gunmen stormed the Bekhtar Guest House in Kabul’s Shar-e-Now District being used by UN and other international workers.

Esto was a former school teacher who also worked as an electoral officer and civic education officer in the Philippines before serving as a UN volunteer in Liberia, Timor-Leste, and Nepal. Aytch S. de la Cruz

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