Filipino flies home after 20 years

Thanks to the kind readers of Emirates 24|7 and well-wishers, a UAE Filipino who hadn’t returned home for more than two decades was able to return to his home country and meet his ageing mother.

Emirates 24|7 readers, including the Filipino community members in the UAE, came forward to lend a helping hand to the 60-year-old Bernardo Basco Ocampo who hadn’t gone home for 20 years due to financial hardship.

After this website reported the plight of the ageing Kabayan from Bisaya region of Philippines, a number of readers, community members and the Philippines media in the UAE were in touch with offers of financial, moral and networking help to enable Bernardo reach home to meet his 80-year old mother, Virginia Basco Ocampo.

On Sunday, he met his mother after a gap of 20 years. On April 13, 2016, the Philippine Consulate in Dubai issued him an outpass, after Bernardo received his passport from the Court. "My dream of going home has been realized now," he said.

“Thanks to Emirates 24|7, I am a free man now,” he told this website before leaving. “I am flying to the Philippines after a gap of 20 years. When I called up my mother to share the good news, she was weeping. I am thankful to the good people in Dubai and the UAE for helping me go back to my home town. I love Dubai and it is a kind and generous city. My destiny would have been different, if my story was not published on Emirates 24|7 and its Facebook page,” said a jubilant Bernardo, whose complex financial woes were solved by the readers, which included social workers, the Philippines Consulate and an Emirati good Samaritan who managed to bail him out of the liabilities.

 “I got my passport back from the Dubai courts but it is already expired. Now I got an outpass from the Philippines Consulate in Dubai. I am also thankful to the generous and visionary leaders of the UAE for relieving me from paying an immigration fine for overstaying in the country for 12 years,” he said, Bernardo's story went viral on the internet after it was shared by many Emirates 24|7 readers.

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