Immigration officers at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport rescued 17 suspected human trafficking victims who were illegally recruited to work as household service workers in the Middle East.
BI Port Operations Division Chief Grifton Medina said the women victims disguised as tourists were intercepted before they could board their flights to Hong Kong and Macau en route to their final destinations in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
“It appears that these victims were recruited by a syndicate which separately booked them on several flights in order to mislead our immigration officers on the purpose of their trip. And that is to work abroad without documentation,” Medina said.
He said the BI’s intensified campaign against trafficking has forced the syndicates to shift their operations to other exit ports, like Cebu.
“They are, however, wrong in assuming that we are less vigilant in guarding our ports outside Manila,” Medina said.
BI Commissioner Jaime Morente has already alerted BI personnel manning the different reports to be extra vigilant following the incident at Mactan airport.
Ma. Asuncion Palma-Gil, BI-MCIA’s travel control and enforcement unit head, disclosed that the 17 passengers were offloaded from five different flights and that 13 of them were hired to work in Dubai while the other four were bound for Qatar.
“They all admitted having UAE and Qatari visas in their possession and that they were recruited by individuals they only met via Facebook or through their people they know currently working in Dubai and Doha,” Palma-Gil said.
She added that the passengers were not familiar with their travel itinerary and what they would do upon arriving in Hong Kong and Macau as they would only rely on instructions to be given to them by their handlers.
“This is a clear case of human trafficking wherein victims who are jobless and have no visible means of support are sent abroad and put in harm’s way to satisfy the cravings for profit of unscrupulous recruiters,” Palma-Gil added.