DFA working to bring home 'up to 100' trafficking victims from Southeast Asia
MANILA, Philippines (Updated 3:05 p.m.) — The Department of Foreign Affairs said it is working on the repatriation of Filipinos who fell victim to illegal trafficking schemes and who are now in countries across Southeast Asia.
The Philippines has for decades been sending workers abroad. Migrant labor has led to higher pay and billions of pesos a year in remittances but has also exposed overseas Filipinos to the risk of abuse and unregulated recruitment.
"These are Filipino workers who were promised jobs as data encoders but when they got there, they ended up working for POGOs, or have been converted to illegal scammers," Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Eduardo Jose de Vega, who handles migrant workers affairs, said in Filipino during a briefing on state television on Wednesday.
"The others would end up getting physically abused if they cannot get a client so we have a few of those, more than a hundred, across different countries in Southeast Asia."
De Vega later clarified that they are looking to bring home close to 100 overseas Filipinos who fell victim to a scam by Chinese operators in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar.
However, he said that not all of the workers want to come home.
"Some are not subjected to abuse if they meet their quota. Some [may be staying] out of fear," de Vega told Philstar.com in a WhatsApp message.
"We are doing what we can, including reaching out to foreign governments and [the] International Organization for Migration for assistance."
De Vega urged Filipinos seeking jobs abroad to properly process their employment through the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.
The DFA has rescued 12 Filipino OFWs who were promised work either as customer service representatives or as data encoders in Thailand but ended up being forced to work to fool people into investing in crypto scams. Sen. Risa Hontiveros, who bared the scam at the Senate, said the victims were recruited over Facebook.
READ: Hontiveros bares fake job ads, trafficking of Pinoys to Myanmar for crypto scam
The Department of Migrant Workers previously said it is also investigating to see if similar operations are being conducted in Cambodia and Laos.
As of November this year, the DFA has helped 7,880 overseas Filipinos fly back home. Over half of the repatriates are from the Middle East, with 942 of them flown home from Kuwait.
De Vega said some of their repatriates were brought home due to the political situation in the countries they were based in, such as the 70 from Sri Lanka.
"Not all Filipinos repatriated are brought home due to an emergency," he said. "Some Filipinos run away from their employers, forfeitting their employment, so the embassies or officers need to facilitate their exit permit and sometimes, the department would pay for expenses, including their repatriation flight."
READ: 7,880 distressed OFWs repatriated this year – Palace
The DFA has an Assistance to Nationals Fund, which the department uses to finance documents or services given to Filipinos overseas such as obtaining the exit permit or by shouldering penalties. – with reports from Franco Luna
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Editor's note: An earlier report with the headline 'DFA working to bring home hundreds of trafficking victims from Southeast Asia' has been revised to reflect a clarification by the Department of Foreign Affairs
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