Repatriated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs)
Vice President Jejomar Binay has mandated that all repatriated overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) regardless of origin will now be interviewed upon arrival in the country.
Binay, the Presidential Adviser on OFW Concerns and concurrent Chairman Emeritus of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT), ordered the mandatory interviews after the IACAT’s discovery of an alleged minor worker who arrived from Syria.
“Our OVP (Office of the Vice President) staff noticed that a female worker looked suspiciously very much younger than her declared age. The passport she presented said she was in her 30s, but when she was interviewed, she admitted that the passport she was using wasn’t hers,” Binay said, in a statement.
The IACAT will conduct regular interviews of repatriates, as it tries to build its own database of Filipinos who were repatriated and off-loaded.
Binay said this would allow them to identify recruitment agencies, government officials and personnel who are possibly involved in human trafficking.
“It would also help establish a possible pattern of deployment being done by illegal recruiters and trafficking syndicates, minimize re-victimization of Filipino irregular OFWs, minimize repatriation costs,” he said.
Last January 13, there were 73 repatriates from Syria who arrived in the country, but only eight were regular workers. It was discovered that most of the women had tampered passports. Ten females admitted to using assumed identities.f
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