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CEBU’S
suspected extensive and syndicated “escort
services”—getting people, mostly workers, to get through
airport processing easily—may be in for another drubbing
from the Bureau of Immigration (BI) because Immigration
Commissioner Marcelino Libanan has sent a team to look
into the situation at the Mactan-Cebu International
Airport.
Libanan
had received a report from an association of
manpower-recruitment agencies complaining that crime
gangs are very active in illegal recruitment and the
attendant escort services.
Those
who leave the country as undocumented or illegally
recruited OFWs get through the BI desks using escort
services operated by rogue immigration and airport
officials.
Raul de
Vera Jr., president of the Association of Agencies
Accredited to Cyprus (AAAC), also wrote Administrator
Rosalinda Baldoz of the Philippine Overseas Employment
Administration, asking her help to have the Labor
department stop the illegal recruitment by the
syndicates. They said these have already victimized many
Filipinos who wanted to work abroad. They paid huge sums
to the gangs, only to be deported back to the
Philippines or end up as undocumented aliens in foreign
countries.
De Vera
disclosed that undocumented Filipino contract workers
were being hustled through the Mactan airport to the
Middle East and
Southeast Asia, and “many of them end up in
Cyprus.”
He added
that the illegal-recruitment rings began using Mactan
after the Immigration office succeeded in stopping the
equally abhorrent escort services at the Ninoy Aquino
International Airport (Naia) in Manila that have
victimized tens of thousands of Filipinos wanting to
work abroad over the years.
“When
Libanan took over leadership of the BI, he made it
difficult for these syndicates to operate at the Naia,”
said de Vera.
De Vera
said, “Libanan gave back our trust in government and we
are confident he will stop these human- smuggling
syndicates at the Cebu airport as he did at the Naia.”
Libanan
had organized the Migration Compliance and Monitoring
Group as the last line of defense against human
smuggling and illegal recruitment, and succeeded in
halting the illegal human flow that has been going on at
the Naia for years.
Libanan
thanked the Cebu AAAC for their vigilance against
illegal recruitment, saying “the BI program against
human smuggling needs the support of the public” and
invited the leaders of the overseas-placement industry
to a consultation meeting. |
