Daily, over 200 Pinoys try to leave Phl for work

MANILA, Philippines – Bureau of Immigration (BI) records showed that almost 200 Filipinos attempt to sneak out of the country daily to work abroad.

BI officials said that more than 32,000 aspiring overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) posing as tourists were barred from leaving the country.

BI Associate Commissioner Siegfried Mison said from January to June, the bureau had “offloaded” or denied exit from various international airports in the country some 32,038 so-called “tourists workers.”

“Our BI operative prevented them from boarding the planes because in all likelihood these travelers were victims of human trafficking and they are just posing as tourists,” he said.

Mison pointed out that the BI only allows those with complete requirements, especially overseas employment contracts from the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), to leave for employment abroad.

He said immigration officers are not curtailing the right of Filipinos to travel abroad, but the government has to ensure the safety and security of OFWs.

“It’s for their own safety that we require them to present documents from the POEA if they would want to work abroad,” Mison said.

Immigration officials assigned at the different airports said they could still not determine whether the number of so-called tourist workers is increasing since it was only last year that they launched an intensified campaign against human trafficking.

Mison said all those who were offloaded for the past six months were referred to the Interagency Council Against Human Trafficking (IACAHT) for the appropriate filing of criminal charges.

Immigration officials also admitted that only two cases of human trafficking have been filed before the court out of the thousands of Filipinos who were offloaded due to lack of employment documents.

Although many tourist workers were prevented from leaving, recruitment officials claimed that many OFWs were still able to leave by paying a “facilitation fee” to BI agents.

Recruitment leaders said that OFWs using tourist visas, particularly those bound for Afghanistan and other countries with existing deployment ban, allegedly pay as much as P50,000.

BI officials, however, denied the allegations and claimed that “outsiders” and not BI officials received the bribe money.

On the other hand, Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) chief Carmelita Dimzon said the government is now offering various packages so that Filipinos would have the option to stay and not leave the country illegally.

Dimzon said OWWA is now implementing the P2-billion reintegration program that gives returning OFWs the chance to get as much as P2 million in loans so they could put up their own business.

She said the agency also assisted close to 10,000 OFWs who were repatriated from war-torn Libya.

Dimzon said a number of OFWs continue to return home from Libya and they were given P10,000 financial assistance.

She said OWWA has already released some P95 million in financial assistance to returning workers from Libya.

Dimzon said OWWA has also allowed recruitment agencies to pay on installment basis the P143-million repatriation cost of the OFWs from Libya. –Mayen Jaymalin (The Philippine Star)