By Gabriela Baron
The Bureau of Immigration (BI) said three Fillipinos who were recently repatriated were forced to live in the jungle by traffickers.
BI Commissioner Norman Tansingco said the three victims arrived in the country on Aug. 17 from Bangkok, Thailand.
Tansingco said the victims were in their 20s to 40s and made up of two females and one male.
One of the victims departed the Philippines for the United Arab Emirates in 2021 with her Pakistani fiance and lived in Dubai with a spouse visa.
The victim said she immediately traveled to Myanmar via Bangkok after joining a Facebook group with a job advertisement offering 1,000 USD monthly, with food and lodging as inclusions.
Upon her arrival in Thailand, she was fetched and they traveled for 10 hours in a van before transferring to a fishing boat.
The victim said that she did not expect to work in Myanmar as she was promised work in Thailand only. She said she was made to work as a bitcoin scammer.
The second victim left as an overseas Filipino worker but was recruited in the same manner.
The victims were housed in an enclosed location in the middle of a jungle and had to pay for their release.
Tansingco warned aspiring overseas workers not to accept offers online to work abroad illegally.
“This is a big syndicate operating in several Asian countries,” he said.
“We are the first country to raise the alarm against this modus, and we aim to be the first to eliminate this in our country by helping arrest and jail the recruiters,” he added.
All victims were assisted by the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking and the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration.
-ag
