VP Binay orders mandatory interviews of repatriated Pinoys

To know how illegal recruiters operate, Vice President Jejomar Binay has mandated that all repatriated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) be interviewed as they arrive in the Philippines. A press statement on the Office of the Vice President (OVP) website said Binay ordered the mandatory interviews after the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) found out that a minor reportedly arrived from Syria, along with 55 other repatriated Filipino workers on January 7.  “Our OVP staff noticed that a female worker looked suspiciously very much younger than her declared age. The passport she presented said she was in her 30s, but when she was interviewed, she admitted that the passport she was using wasn’t hers,” said Binay, who is also presidential adviser on OFW concerns and IACAT chairman emeritus. Binay said the IACAT is now conducting regular interviews of repatriates to build a database of repatriated Filipinos and offloaded international-bound passengers. “It would also help establish a possible pattern of deployment being done by illegal recruiters and trafficking syndicates, minimize re-victimization of Filipino irregular OFWs, minimize repatriation costs,” Binay said. Binay said the IACAT also hopes to identify recruitment agencies violating deployment rules as well as government officials and personnel involved in illegal recruitment and trafficking in persons. Binay also said the IACAT recently begun implementing the new guidelines on departure formalities for international-bound Filipino passengers in all airports and seaports in the country, to prevent such abuses from happening in the future. Repatriates from Syria On January 13, some 73 Filipinas repatriated from Syria arrived in the country. Of the 73, only eight were regular workers. "During the initial verification of their passports by IACAT members from the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Visayan Forum Foundation, Inc. (VFFI), and the Ninoy Aquino International Airport Task Force Against Trafficking (NIATFAT), it was discovered that most of the women were holders of tampered passports. Also, during the interviews conducted by the IACAT, 10 women admitted to using assumed identities," the Office of the Vice President said. “Some passports had substituted pages and photos, others had counterfeit border stamps,” Binay said. He also noted that during the interviews, they found all 73 women were not able to receive the actual salaries promised to them. Even the eight regular or documented OFWs did not receive the agreed salaries while 60 of them were subjected to unfair labor and exploitation. "They were victims of sexual, physical and verbal abuses not only by their employers but by the agency personnel based in Syria,” he added. - VVP, GMA News