29,000 warrants out for illegal recruiters

MANILA, Philippines—Get the big fish first. Vice President Noli de Castro gave this order Monday to the Task Force Against Illegal Recruitment (TFAIR) after learning that there were 29,000 still unserved warrants of arrest against illegal recruiters.De Castro, presidential adviser on overseas Filipino workers and TFAIR head, told Colonel Gilbert Sosa, TFAIR operations chief, to prioritize the arrest of big recruiters, or those with the most number of pending warrants to prevent them from victimizing more outbound Filipino workers.

“Hanapin ninyo iyong pinakamalaki at iyung may pinakamaraming warrants kundi mauubos oras ng task force [Get the biggest recruiters with the most number of warrants to save time],” he said.

De Castro said it would be better for the task force to publish the names and agencies of recruiters with existing arrest warrants to warn the public against engaging their services.

He said the TFAIR would ask for more budget from the government in order to go after big recruiters and submit its accomplishment report to show how it was faring in its work.

On Saturday, Sosa told De Castro on the latter’s radio program, “Para Sa Iyo, Bayan,” that the 29,000 pending warrants did not necessarily represent 29,000 recruiters since many of them were subjects of multiple warrants.

He said some of these cases carried a “no-bail” order.

Asked by De Castro why the warrants against these illegal recruiters remained unserved, Sosa assured the vice president that the newly created task force was going after them. –Cynthia Balana, Philippine Daily Inquirer