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By Ric R. Puod, Senior Reporter
(First of three parts)
(The names of the victims described here are
fictitious to conceal their identities. Other personal circumstances
surrounding their lives have also been withheld. But they are real
people who have been deceived and abused, and whose cases have been
documented by the Visayan Forum—Author)
Rosemarie and Liza escaped from the RMM
Promotions and Training Center in Bacoor, Cavite, with P2,000 in
cash and an automated teller machine card filched by Rosemarie from
the wallet of a fellow recruit. They hurriedly got a ride to Pier 12
at Manila’s North Harbor, hoping to return home to Pagadian City,
Zamboanga del Sur. “But the money was good only for a single
ticket,” said Marina Ulluege, field officer of the Visayan Forum,
a nongovernmental organization working for the rights of migrant
workers. “So they agreed that only Rosemarie could leave when the
ship arrives the next day.”
Rosemarie had the control of the money because,
according to her written account, she was the one who stole it. Liza
would have to beg for a free ride from people who might took pity on
her. “She was wandering around the piers,” Ulluege said,
“asking for a free boarding pass to Zamboanga.”
But the furious recruit they had robbed came
rushing from Bacoor in the agency’s van and caught up with them at
the pier. “She slapped both of them right then and there,”
Ulluege continued. A security guard of the Sulpicio Lines intervened
and took them to a nearby police station, which turned them over to
the Visayan Forum’s Balay Silungan sa Daungan at Pier 8.
Rosemarie and Liza escape in March from the RMM
Promotions ferreted out more firsthand accounts from other victims
of human trafficking. The Department of Social Welfare and
Development rescued Jean and Amy from the same agency, whose owner,
Gleah Macatol, got Jean employed at the Salina videoke bar in Imus,
where her father worked as a floor manager.
“Our training was very grueling,” they
recounted. “We had little time to rest. The food was scarce. We
were physically and orally abused by our male trainer every time we
committed mistakes.”
Big bucks
The four recruits told the Visayan Forum that a
woman named Adela Buco, an illegal recruiter, promised them work as
dancers in Japan. She told us we could leave in two weeks for Japan
and earn a monthly salary of P40,000,” according to their
individual sworn statements taken by the social workers for case
management and psychological evaluation.
Buco dangled a litany of promises before their
parents, which included a P50 daily allowance for their personal
needs while training at the promotion agency, a written statement
taking full responsibility for whatever would happen to them and an
assurance that she would pay their fare back home anytime they
decided to leave. It was a scheme they would realize later, because
none of those promises was fulfilled.
Slipping in droves
For more than two years the Visayan Forum has
been blocking off major entry and drop-off points for trafficked
persons, especially at Manila’s North Harbor, where an annual
average of 4 million passengers pass to and fro. An official annual
estimate of the victims, however, could not yet be ascertained.
Worldwide, victims of human trafficking fell at
1.2 million last year, according to the International Labor
Organization. In Southeast Asia, the United States reported this
year that trafficked persons reached at least 225,000, most of whom
are in the Philippines. But the Visayan Forum says human trafficking
is difficult to document, because “it happens unnoticed every day
and anywhere.” Their forum’s statistics are based only on the
number of the persons rescued, including those who have escaped from
their illegal-recruitment agencies.
“We cannot ignore the increasing number of
women and children illegally recruited for labor and
prostitution,” the Visayan Forum said in its situational analysis
of the Manila Port. “They are very young, mostly women aged 15 to
22.”
Since October this year, the Visayan Forum has
served more than 2,000 victims of human trafficking since it ran its
halfway house with the Philippine Ports Authority. Many of the cases
it has documented involve teenage girls from Mindanao, whose dreams
for a better life plunged them into despair. The Visayan Forum said
the victims were deceived and maltreated, and their recruitment
agencies pimped them in brothels or sent them to sweatshops. Others
were employed as kasambahay (housemaids), whose employers sometimes
beat them, or while they were waiting to be employed, were
temporarily housed by their recruitment agencies and fed “quick
chow” for breakfast, “quick chow” for lunch and “quick
chow” for dinner.
As the Visayan Forum and its network government
agencies continue to fight human trafficking, more and more victims
are being intercepted, rescued or have escaped from their employers,
like Minnie and Joy. They were also recruited to work as dancers in
Japan, the two said in an interview with The Times.
“We worked for a Japanese with a Filipino wife
who has a training center here in Manila,” Minnie said. At the
training center they too had little time to rest. And since they
were just 16 years old, they had to wait for another two grueling
years shaping up their bodies and honing their skills—a sure pass
into the world of “Japayukis.”
(To be continued)
Part
2 |Conclusion |
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