BI wants probe of airline worker for human trafficking

MANILA, Philippines — An airline employee is suspected of aiding illegal recruiters and human traffickers by helping facilitate the travel of their Filipino victims out of the country, the Bureau of Immigration (BI) said yesterday.

Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco has asked officials of the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) to investigate the possible connivance between an airline worker and human traffickers and illegal recruiters.

In a statement, the BI did not disclose the name of the airline worker or the company, saying the matter has already been referred to NAIA’s anti-trafficking task force and its airport police department for investigation.

The BI chief said the incident should warn all airline personnel that they should not connive with human traffickers and illegal recruiters.

“They should stop preying on our poor countrymen who want to work abroad due to poverty and their desire to uplift the lives of their families. We thus urge airport authorities to dig deeper into these shenanigans and file the cases against those involved,” the BI chief added.

Tansingco said he issued the appeal after BI officers at NAIA Terminal 3 intercepted a woman who attempted to leave with a fake immigration departure stamp on her passport last April 5.

The passenger was supposed to fly to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia en route to her final destination in the United Arab Emirates where she was reportedly recruited to work as a domestic household worker.

During questioning, the woman reportedly mentioned that she was assisted by an airline employee and the latter’s former officemate in queuing at the immigration departure counter.

She was reportedly instructed to fall in line after her handler gave her passport and boarding pass which had fake BI departure stamps on them.

?But the passenger was stopped from leaving after the immigration officer who examined her passport noticed that it already had an immigration departure stamp that appeared to be spurious.

This was later confirmed by the BI’s document forensic laboratory which said that the stamp was fake.

Last year, NAIA security guards caught several passengers who attempted to leave without immigration inspection by wearing fake NAIA passes in going to the airport’s boarding gate.

Over 1 million passengers

More than one million passengers used the NAIA terminals from April 1 to 9, the Manila International Airport Authority (MIAA) said.

MIAA yesterday said a total of 1.051 million travelers used the airports since April 1.

MIAA assistant general manager Bryan Co, in an interview aired over CNN Philippines, said they are expecting the number to reach 1.2 million yesterday, with more travelers arriving with the holiday period ending.

Co said that on Easter Sunday, about 118,000 passengers passed through the four terminals of NAIA.

“Most of them are arriving passengers, with 65,000 passengers compared to around 53,000 that were departing out of Manila,” he said.

On Black Saturday, the MIAA official said they recorded 60,000 arrivals and 56,000 departures.

While MIAA said it made sure that the airlines working at NAIA have ample manpower for the influx of passengers, they acknowledged that managing queues and traffic flow around terminals were among the major challenges.

Co said they are prepared to cater to the influx of arriving passengers.

“We are prepared, the same way that we have prepared for the departing passengers over the past few days,” he said. – Rudy Santos, Ralph Edwin Villanueva