Ormoc City Mayor Richard Gomez would like to clarify the issue that reaches President Duterte that he refused to welcome repatriates Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) in the city.

Under the Balik Probinsya Program, OFW must be given equal constitutional rights to return back home and the government is to give them proper assistance without violating quarantine protocols amid COVID-19 crisis in the country.

In a previous issue, Gomez expressed sentiment over the agencies involved in facilitating OFW saying that they don’t have proper coordination with him. Gomez was citing the Facebook post on May 25, 2020 concerning the OFW just arrived that day in Palo, Leyte from which Gomez said on his Facebook post saying, “It only takes one infected person to get to our city to infect a hundred innocent people bec of carelessness from the national government agencies,” he said.

Obviously, this only means that safety measure is to be given more important to keep safe of the people.

In similar cases, Presidential Legal Counsel Salvador Panelo reportedly said to Ormoc Mayor saying that he was just “nataranta” from which Gomez replied on his Instagram post and explained his point of view in response to the issue thrown against him.

The issue fired up following after the statement of President Duterte to Mayor Richard Gomez on Thursday late at night from where, according to the report published by the Manila Bulletin, President Duterte said, “I don’t have any quarrel with Richard Gomez. He was the one who said that he is not going to accept anybody from entering or leaving the place. Okay man lang ‘yan (That’s okay). It’s part of maybe the vigilance that a person nurtures in his heart of how to do it.”

The statement of President Duterte comes out following after the statement of Ormoc Mayor Richard Gomez from which the later was shock pointing nobody how the President knows about this.

Rappler has made a “fact-check” to the said issue if Ormoc City Mayor Richard Gomez really released the said statement yet, result turns with the rating as “FALSE.”

Gomez took a screenshot of the said result of the fact-check and posted this to his Instagram account but to know the person telling the President saying he did not want to accept OFWs is yet to know so far.