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By Jomar Canlas, Reporter
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates: So-called visit
visas have led to maltreatment and prostitution of Filipino women
using such documents to enter this country.
This was reported on Tuesday by Consular Officer
Rafael Palencia Jr. to Chairman Dante A. Ang of the Commission on
Filipinos Overseas (CFO) and head of the presidential Task Force on
Anti-Trafficking.
Palencia said they had found out that most of
the Filipinas have Japanese visas. Because they could no longer work
in Japan, they enter Dubai using the visit visas.
In 2006, 30 Filipinas sought protection from the
Philippine Consulate against pimps who had forced them into
prostitution. They said these pimps were Filipinos with strong
connections allegedly at the Bureau of Immigration in Manila.
In 2007, 10 Filipinas reported to the consulate that they, too, had
been forced into prostitution.
These 40 Filipinas were aged 16 to 24.
Ang said the pimps in Dubai and their alleged
handlers in the Immigration bureau must be arrested. He requested
the Philippine Consulate to secure affidavits from the Filipinas for
the filing of the formal complaints against their traffickers.
”We should prosecute the [pimps] and their [alleged] contacts in
the Bureau of Immigration to put a stop to this human trafficking in
Dubai,” he added. “It seems to have become their new destination
and our Filipinas could become victims of prostitution there.”
Palencia said a pimp receives 300 dirhams (about
$83) for every Filipina who gets a customer. The Filipina, however,
will not get paid. The pimp will tell her that she still owes 15,000
dirhams ($4,166) for airfare from Manila to Dubai.
Dubai Consul General Vicente Bandillo said other Filipino women who
also complain of maltreatment by their employers and whose two-month
visit visas are set to expire prefer going to Kish island and Ashim
island in Iran and Kasab in Oman rather than back to the
Philippines. He explained that exit fee in these areas is much lower
than that imposed by Manila. These Filipinos, Bandillo said, would
eventually be enticed by these same employers to return to their
jobs in Dubai. Apparently, they can live with abuses but not the
humiliation of having gone to and earning nothing in Dubai.
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