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CEBU CITY: The Bureau of Immigration region 7 is renewing its drive
against human trafficking to lessen, if not eradicate, the
increasing number of undocumented overseas Filipino workers (OFWs),
who are suffering abroad, reported the Philippine News Agency.
The bureau’s region 7 Director Reynaldo
Almaden said his office has the power to stop passengers from
leaving if there is a hold-departure order from the court, if he or
she is in the watch list, or if he or she is a threat to national
security.
Almaden said that while there is a right to
travel as guaranteed by the Constitution, that right has to be
curtailed if the intention to travel is to illegally work abroad.
Director Evelia Dorato of the Philippine
Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) has been complaining that
OFWs who work illegally are those who leave as tourists.
Some of them depart for Singapore where only a
passport is needed, then proceed to Lebanon and other countries in
the Middle East and Europe.
Singapore is part of the 10-member Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) where a visa is not required.
Illegal OFWs and illegal recruiters are taking
advantage by first flying to any of these countries, and proceed to
their country of destination.
Dorato said that because these OFWs have no
working permits, POEA could hardly trace them once their foreign
employers subject them to abuse.
Dorato said that oftentimes, families of OFWs
who are working illegally abroad seek the agency’s assistance to
trace their whereabouts.
But it is hard to trace them especially, if they
left as tourists and their recruiters are unknown.
Almaden said that if the passengers possess
tourist visa but they are bound for countries without tourist spots,
then they could be stopped.
Several passengers, who would have left to work
abroad but were disguised as tourists, were stopped from leaving at
the Mactan Cebu International Airport, where there are several
flights for Singapore and Malaysia.
Early this week, Immigration Commissioner
Marcelino Libanan said human trafficking syndicates are again
actively using Southeast Asian and some Philippine airports as
transit points for Canada and Europe.
Libanan said that Bureau of Immigrations takes
notice of the unusual rise of human trafficking incidence and is
taking steps to coordinate with its counterparts in other countries,
such as sending advisories to Malaysia.
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