Human trafficking
January 4, 2008 -- Got something to say?
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While the United States, the United Nations and other international agencies have been working hard to stop human trafficking, unscrupulous Filipino officials and recruiters are circumventing the rules to make money out of the thousands of young Filipino men and women who are desperate to work abroad.
Recent exposes of human trafficking of Filipinos in Asia, Europe and the US are only a few of the many horror stories coming from abroad. In most of the cases, there have been evidence that the workers were recruited to do some form of work but ended up either in brothels or doing things other than they were hired to do.
The most publicized case in the US is the Sentosa nurses who walked out of their jobs in New York because they said they were asked to do things that was different from what was specified in the contracts. And the Philippines, instead of helping the nurses fight their case in court, is sitting idly by while they are being prosecuted for walking out of their job. The recruiters are said to have powerful political NY personages supporting them.
The Philippine government, which is benefiting from overseas workers, are not doing anything to go after unscrupulous recruiters. The people who prop up the economy and help strengthen the peso are left to fend for themselves.
There are many agencies of the Philippine government that is charged with looking after the welfare of overseas workers. Among them are the bureau of immigration, the department of labor, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency. They are supposed to check and double check the contracts of all departing workers to ensure that they will not end up in prostitution dens, in strife-torn countries or fighting a legal battle in court.
A recent Washington D.C. study says there is a need to reform OWWA because most of its cash it collects are spent for operations rather than to help OFWs in distress. Many of OFWs rescued from prostitution dens were not made by these government agencies but mostly by private individuals. As far as is known, there has been no conviction of any government officials who have close links with notorious recruiters. No major reform has been undertaken among these offices to ensure that there will be no repetition of past incidents. Have the Department of Labor adopted some of the recommendations of the US State Department and Department of Labor about human trafficking?
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