Manila: The Philippine government has eased the ban on Filipinos going to Afghanistan, and has allowed its diplomats, overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) working with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato), the UN and military camps of the United States, including OFWs married to Afghan nationals, to return there, a senior official said.

The lifting of the total deployment ban that was issued by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) in July has been partially lifted to benefit specific OFWs, Hans Cacdac told Gulf News.

“The employees of the OFWs who are allowed to return to Afghanistan have fully satisfied the Philippine government’s need for guaranteed safety of their foreign employees,” Cacdac said, adding that OFWs with valid and existing contracts are conditions that must be met to allow their return to Afghanistan.

These OFWs would be classified as foreign workers in US military camps, the UN, Nato, and other foreign embassies, said Cacdac.

Meanwhile, OFWs without active employment contracts but who are married to Afghan nationals are also allowed to return to their families for humanitarian reasons, said Cacdac.

In July, the POEA declared a total deployment ban on Filipinos going to Afghanistan after Manila’s foreign affairs department classified the level of political unrest there as very high and called on OFWs to voluntary return the Philippines.

At the time, 41 people, including six children and the imam of a mosque, were killed by a suicide bomber in the Urgun district of Paktika province, near Pakistan. But the spokesman for Paktika’s governor, Mokhlis Afghan, said 43 had died in the bombing incident. Two others were killed earlier in a bus in Kabul.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has succeeded in diplomatically solving alleged election fraud as two presidential candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Gani vied for outgoing President Hamid Karzai’s post in June.

Nato has been progressively withdrawing 50,000 remaining combat troops in Afghanistan, a move meant to end this year. Local forces, trained to battle Taliban insurgents, could not stop the latter from undertaking increased attacks on foreign and Afghan security forces.

Civilians are often caught in the crossfire. Civilian casualties soared by 24 per cent to 4,853 in the first half of 2014 compared to the same period in 2013, according to the UN.

The Philippine government has undertaken extra precaution for the safety of OFWs because many of them are hosted in politically unstable countries.

About 10 million OFWs are based worldwide. They represent 10 per cent of the 100 million population in the Philippines.

OFWs remit an average of more than $20 billion (Dh73.4 billion) to their relatives in the Philippine every year, making them a very important sector in fuelling the country’s economy.