A congressman from Mindanao on Monday told the Immigration Commissioner and the Secretary of Labor to make public the immigration status and the whereabouts of at least 170,000 “excess” Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators workers who entered the country since 2017.
At the same time, Surigao del Norte Rep. Robert Ace Barbers, the chairman of the House Committee on Dangerous Drugs, urged the National Police and the National Bureau of Investigation to make public updates on the criminal cases against POGO workers linked to criminal activities and for the BI and the DOLE to do the same, “to determine if these workers had been stripped of their work permits or if have they been deported.”
He said that for a long time, the public had been kept blind on the real number of mainland Chinese who came to the Philippines supposedly towork as POGO workers.
These foreigners, Barbers said were granted visas upon arrival by the
Bureau of Immigration and work permits by the Department of Labor and Employment. “Aside from whereabouts of these excess POGO workers, I am also concerned on the status of the cases of a number of POGO workers caught by law enforcers for involvement in prostitution, women trafficking, drug manufacture and trafficking, drug den operation, online fraud, forging of Philippine passports, money laundering, illegal health clinics and other crimes,” Barbers said.