Manila: No overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) were among the five who were killed, although some of them were among hundreds who were injured when a 6.4 magnitude earthquake collapsed eight buildings in Taiwan on Saturday, sources said.

The Philippines has not received any report that OFWs were killed or injured in Taiwan’s recent earthquake, said Manila’s foreign affairs department spokesman Charles Jose, adding, “This was confirmed by the Manila Economic Cultural Office (MECO) in Taiwan.”

MECO Director Mario Molina said he is now coordinating with the ongoing rescue operation of the Taiwanese Disaster Response Centre to help identify “possible Filipino victims”.

“Groups of OFWs immediately coordinated with each other after the earthquake occurred. We wanted to find out if one was injured or killed,” Ronald Tila, machine operator in an electronic company, told Gulf News.

OFWs have formed their “respective search systems” especially after news spread that a 17-storey building had collapsed in Tainan; and seven other high rise buildings were heavily damaged in Kaoshiung, said Tila, adding he saw houses and factories that “tilted badly” after the earthquake.

Sharing her experience of the deadly quake, Hazel Barrio-Lobete, a factory worker, told ABS CBN, “A thousand OFWs were not hurt, but we panicked and we were traumatised when our dormitory swayed violently at three in the morning in Tainan City.”

“I learnt that some OFWs were wounded, suffered broken bones, and were in a state of shock in factories where they were stranded,” said Lobete. She did not give details.

In badly-hit Kaoshiung, Tin-Tin Degracia, a caretaker, told Bombo Radyo, “My sick employer and I went out of his house when the earthquake occurred. We almost did not make it. Tables and cabinets were toppled, floors cracked open, and things spilt on the floor preventing us to leave the house.”

“It was the strongest earthquake I have ever experience in my four years in Taiwan” assessed Degracia.

MECO’s Molina said that many OFWs who work as caretakers and house helpers were brought by their employers when the latter went abroad ahead of the Chinese New Year.

Some 120,000 OFWs are based in Taiwan, majority of them as construction and factory workers, and the rest as caretakers and house helpers.

The earthquake occurred 43 kilometres southeast of Tainan where two million people live.