| Binay: Check if Syria repatriates were trafficked |
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| Mar 13, 2012 at 08:00 AM | |
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MANILA, Philippines – The Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) has been tasked to determine if the recent batch of Filipinos repatriated from Syria were victims of human trafficking and illegal recruitment. “We want to make sure that these OFWs were recruited via legal channels, and if not, we want to identify the persons or agencies that recruited them so that we can file the necessary charges against them,” Vice President Jejomar Binay said. A total of 37 workers, including one male, arrived at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport via an Emirates flight, the same flight with the vice president. Binay came from a three-day Word Scout Committee Meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. He is the national president of the Boy Scouts of the Philippines and the chairman of the Asia-Pacific Regional Scout Committee. Binay said most of the repatriates were from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). He said that he suspected that many of them were illegally recruited and trafficked outside the country. Binay is the chairman of the Presidential Taskforce Against Illegal Recruitment (PTFAIR) and chairman emeritus of the IACAT. He earlier ordered that the mandatory interview of all returning OFWs regardless of the country of origin. The vice president also ordered the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to check reports of OFWs being held in Damascus and Aleppo airports by the Syrian government for days without food. “If the reports are true, then we cannot allow this. We will exhaust all possible diplomatic channels to afford our kababayans the basic human decency that they deserve,” Binay said. --ABS-CBNnews.com |
