Senate to summon hotel owners over Chinese sex dens

MANILA, Philippines — Owners and operators of hotels raided for prostitution catering to Chinese customers in Makati City will be summoned before a Senate hearing soon.

Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who chairs the Senate committee on women, children and family relations, said she will also call to the next hearing concerned travel agencies and Chinese embassy officials.

Hontiveros said the objective of the committee is to “complete the picture” of how Chinese-run prostitution dens and other illegal activities have proliferated in the country since the rise of Philippine offshore gaming operators.

POGOs are online gambling operations that cater to clients, who are mostly located in China. POGO firms, however, are established in the Philippines and employ mostly Chinese nationals who communicate with their clients in their native tongue.

“This (POGO) is gambling in a way that is imported that has foreign employees to cater to foreigners who will do illegal gambling in their country, so there is a natural tendency that these will result in other negative activities like money laundering, drugs, kidnapping and prostitution,” Hontiveros told dzBB yesterday.

She has long underscored the social cost of allowing a rising POGO industry in the country as an additional source of government revenue.

Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año warned yesterday that more raids of these prostitution dens are forthcoming.

“Count on it, that we will raid more areas,” he told in the same radio station in a separate interview.

Año said he ordered the police not to stop until all prostitution dens, especially those whose customers are Chinese and other foreigners, are shut down.

The Cabinet official said he has received reports that a number of these establishments continue to operate despite the government crackdown on human trafficking and prostitution.

“We remind foreign visitors, tourists and workers to respect and follow the country’s laws or face arrest,” he said.

While the next hearing of Hontiveros’ committee has not yet been calendared, a separate committee will be hearing the labor aspect of POGO operations in the country.

 Sen. Joel Villanueva, chairman of the Senate committee on labor and employment, will continue its separate investigation on POGOs’ effects on the local job market this week.

Last week, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Deputy Director for special investigation service Vicente de Guzman III told Hontiveros’ committee that the proliferation of prostitution dens that cater to Chinese-only customers happened shortly after the growth of POGOs in the country.

Maj. Gideon Ines, deputy chief of the Makati City police, said based on their “profiling,” POGO employees are the customers of prostitution dens they have raided in the city in recent months.

 The Makati City police and NBI have conducted at least five raids from September 2019 to January this year, rescuing over 150 Chinese and Filipino women.

Some of those rescued, including 15-year-old “Carina” who testified before the committee hearing, are minors.

 While some of the rescued Chinese were released to their relatives, others remain in the custody of the Department of Social Welfare and Development or private shelters like The Haven in Alabang and Voice of the Free.

De Guzman said the NBI has sought to discuss the matter with Chinese embassy officials in Manila, but nothing so far has come out of it. That is why Hontiveros wants embassy officials to face the Senate to address the issue.

Meanwhile, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) is also doing its part in monitoring the operations of POGOs throughout the country.

Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello said he has given the instruction to all DOLE regional offices in the country to resume inspections of all commercial establishments, including POGO firms.

The routine inspections, aimed at ensuring compliance with labor laws, were suspended last December to give way for year-end disposition of pending labor cases.

“The labor laws compliance officers (LLCOs) who will conduct the inspection are tasked to ensure the compliance of private companies on general labor standards, such as proper payment of wages during holidays, overtime pays, implementation of the minimum wage law, remittance of social benefits of their workers,” Bello said.

Compliance of companies to health and safety standards is also part of the labor inspection. – With Emmanuel Tupas, Mayen Jaymalin