MANILA'S FIGHT AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING INDICATIONG SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS
MANILA, Philippines - In a statement, Bureau of Immigration (BI) Commissioner General Ricardo David Jr welcomed the recently released ‘2011 Interim Trafficking in Persons' report. The report saw the Philippines removed from the Tier 2 Watchlist, where the nation had been ranked in 2009 and 2010.The Tier 2 Watchlist is for countries where the absolute number of trafficked people is increasing significantly. Being placed on this list indicates a government failure to combat human trafficking.
David said the country's improvement on the human trafficking scorecard was "a clear and encouraging sign that the Bureau of Immigration's relentless drive against trafficking has paid off, despite criticism that the bureau has been overzealous in doing its job".- David commended Immigrations personnel at Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) for doing a very
good job over the last several months, in stopping thousands of undocumented overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) who had fallen prey to illegal recruitment and human trafficking syndicates from leaving the country. - Based on the statistics on the period running from August to December 2010, immigration officers at NAIA and other airports stopped more than 27,000 passengers, most of them OFWs disguised as tourists, from leaving.
The combined efforts of all member agencies of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking resulted in the conviction of 21 human traffickers from July 2010 to March this year.Philippine officials recently hailed a US State Department report indicating that significant progress had been made by the country in the campaign against human trafficking.
80 FILIPINO WOMEN BOUND FOR MALAYSIA, INTERCEPTED
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines - An inter-agency task force rescued 80 women in Zamboanga believed to be victims of human trafficking. . The information said the illegal recruits were from Western Visayas and were bound for Kota Kinabalu (my home place) in Malaysia on board a chartered plane from Zamboanga City. 
A security official said the victims were waiting for their chartered flight when they were intercepted at Zamboanga International Airport (ZIA) before noon yesterday. The rescued victims, who claimed to be on a travel tour, came from the different regions in the Philippines, including those from the National Capital Region (NCR), the local Bureau of Immigration (BI) and the Sea-Based anti-trafficking Task Force disclosed.- The recruitment was discovered following intelligence reports of alleged recruitment from Ilo-Ilo to arrive in Zamboanga City via the local airport.
- The women said they were on a travel tour, but many of them could not answer routine questions asked by immigration officers at the Zamboanga International Airport. Police have mounted an investigation into the group on suspicion they were victims of human trafficking and have sent them to social centers for further questioning.
- The Police Aviation Security Group (PASG) reported that victims will be flown to Malaysia and used the country as their jump-off point towards Libya, Lebanon and Egypt, countries where the Philippine government have imposed travel ban due to the current crisis.
According to a Washington-based organization, which monitors human trafficking cases around the world, the Philippines is a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking.the number of women trafficked range from 300,000 to 400,000 and the number of children trafficked range from 60,000 to 100,000,the HumanTrafficking.Org reported.
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