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An official of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) has said that they would file charges against a Quezon City-based agency for illegally recruiting dozens of workers in Mindanao for jobs in the Middle East.
Lawyer Max Salvador, NBI regional director, said that 66 overseas Filipino workers, most of them women, were rescued in a joint raid conducted by the bureau and the police on a house in Juna Subdivision, Davao City, last week.
The operation was carried out after a week-long surveillance and monitoring conducted by the InterAgency Coalition against Trafficking Task Force in the region.
“The women victims said they were promised work abroad. [They were] about to be transported to Manila on their way out of the country,” Salvador said.
Although the recruitment agency, Five Star Recruitment and Manpower Corp., has a license to operate in Quezon City, it does not have permission to do so in Mindanao, he added.
Most of the victims who were turned over to the Department of Social Welfare and Development came from Cotabato City, Sultan Kudarat, North Cotabato and South Cotabato, Salvador said. Some of them were taken to the cities of Butuan, General Santos and Davao for the processing of their NBI clearances, passports and documents.
“Under the law, the act of convincing and transporting applicants by an unlicensed recruiter already constitutes illegal recruitment; and this case, which involves more than three persons, already constitutes illegal recruitment on a large-scale,” Salvador said.