Cebu a human trafficking hub — survey

CEBU — This province has emerged as both the top transit point and top destination in the trafficking of women and children in the country, according to initial findings of an ongoing survey by a non-government advocacy group.

Ma. Gala Enerio, advocacy officer of the End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT), said human trafficking has become a major global concern with no less than 1.2 million children trafficked for prostitution, child labor and domestic servitude in 2003 alone, according to International Labor Organization estimates.

Enerio said women and children trafficked via Cebu are reaching such global destinations as Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Saipan, the Middle East and Italy.

The United States government has provided a yearly funding of $78,370 to ECPAT and another $170,000 to the Visayas Forum Foundation, a similarly oriented advocacy group.

US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone said that of 1,575 victims of trafficking rescued at the Port of Manila, 176 passed through Cebu in just a five-month period, from April to September 2001.

Ronald Pacis, Visayas Forum campaign and advocacy manager, said 55 percent of those rescued were girls below 18 years old. Forty-two percent of these girls hail from Mindanao, and 53 percent from the Visayan provinces of Bohol, Leyte, Samar and Negros.

Because the Philippines has a total of 123 ports nationwide, Pacis said shipping is the major mode of transporting trafficked women and children. This also makes the ports the logical places to check and monitor human trafficking.

He said 85 percent of these girls say it was their first time to come to Cebu which is the hub of the shipping industry because of its central location.

A surprising fact that surfaced in the survey is that 31 percent of those trafficked were aware from the very beginning that they would end up in prostitution, while 17 percent were aware they would find work as domestics abroad.

"These women and children come from families living below the poverty line and opted to seek jobs just to earn a living," Pacis said.

"Their birth certificates are tampered and they are forced by their recruiters to declare false names and ages. These recruiters usually have expired licenses," he said.

In Cebu, Pacis said 46 women and children as young as 15 years old were rescued from three suspected prostitution dens in Guadalupe and Punta Princesa in August last year.

Parents or guardians are enticed by sums of "goodwill money" ranging from P2,000 to P5,000 per child and assurances of good-paying jobs for their children or wards.

One girl, whose parents were paid P2,000, ended up working in a Cebu brothel where she was abused by as many as 10 men every night. — Freeman News Service