Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
MANILA, Philippines—An advocacy campaign is needed to discourage Filipino migrant workers from travelling to Syria, Justice Secretary Leila De Lima said Wednesday.
“We hope to undertake this by familiarizing Filipino migrant workers with the modus operandi of the traffickers and alerting of the imminent risks that they may face due to the political instability in the said destination country,” De Lima said.
The Justice chief said member agencies of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) should come up with the plan and implement the advocacy campaign.
Member agencies of IACAT are the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG), Commission on Filipinos Overseas, Philippine National Police, Philippine Overseas Employment Agency, Overseas Workers’ Welfare Administration, Bureau of Immigration, National Bureau of Investigation, Philippine Commission of Transnational Crime, Council for Women and Children and Philippine Commission for Women.
De Lima’s order was prompted by reports that household service workers continue to be smuggled or trafficked to Syria through Dubai and Oman and other Asian cities despite the existing deployment ban imposed by the Philippines.
On August 17, 2011, the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), an IACAT Council Member, issued Resolution No. 3, Series of 2011 through the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) governing board imposing a total ban on the deployment of migrant workers to Syria.
The mass repatriation of OFWs on the last quarter of 2012 from the strife-torn country gave way to the discovery of numerous repatriated workers with no proper travel documents and/or no existing records of leaving the country.
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