MANILA, Philippines — Twenty-two Filipinos who were caught working illegally in Bahrain arrived back home Saturday.

The workers, who had been staying at the Philippine Embassy’s half-way house in Manama, Bahrain, for several months, were finally able to leave after Philippine Embassy officials secured exit visas for them.

Philippine Ambassador to Bahrain Ma. Corazon Yap-Bahjin accompanied the repatriated workers back to Manila aboard a Qatar Airways flight.

Yap-Bahjin said the workers were under the care of the embassy for over four months while embassy officials worked to get travel clearances from their employers.

“Most of them are runaways who could not adjust to the cultural conditions there. Had they gone through the legal process they would have been briefed by their recruitment agencies on what to expect,” she said.

Yap-Bahjin said the embassy staff were able to speed up the travel clearances for the workers since it was the month of Ramadan, when people in the Gulf State are in a more giving and forgiving spirit.

“In the spirit of Ramadan, we took advantage of the employers’ spirit of charity and we convinced them not to charge for the deployment cost,” the ambassador said.

Since most of the Filipinos staying at the half-way house were runaways, their employers were asking to be reimbursed the $2,000 deployment cost before they issued an exit clearance.

Yap-Bahjin added that since the workers all entered Bahrain illegally, it was the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers Affairs (OUMWA) that shouldered the cost of the repatriation, and not the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration.

She said there are still over 50 Filipinos staying at the half-way house in Manama.

OUMWA Director Enrico Fos welcomed the workers and briefed them on the assistance the government will extend to them despite their being undocumented workers.

Fos said they will be temporarily staying at the OWWA center in Pasay City where they will be provided with transportation fares back to their provinces.

Yap-Bahjin reminded the workers that should they decide to work abroad again, they should follow what 6.4 million Overseas Filipinos Workers did —“do it legally.”