The Philippine Ports Authority (PPA) and the Visayan Forum Foundation (VF) launched today a halfway house called "Balay Silungan sa Daungan" inside the Sasa Port providing 24-hour safety and catchment services for trafficking victims including temporary shelter, help-desk assistance about travel, quick case referrals and telephone hotline counseling.

Visayan Forum is a local non-governmental organization that works to provide a safety net mechanism in the form of protection to those who depart from the port and find themselves stranded and vulnerable. VF is liscenced by the Department of Social Welfare to provide secure temporary care for minors suspected of being trafficked.

Supported by the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), VF works with the PPA to identify and intercept youngsters who are being trafficked or who are at risk of exploitation.

Last August 2000, VF has also started to operate a similar halfway house in the heart of the Manila South Harbor with the help various groups inside the port: the Ports Authority, ferry companies, the Coast Guard, Port Police and security guards.

The port is a critical place where illegally recruited victims are visible and can be helped. Once they pass through, they simply vanish into destination cities offering a myriad of low-paid and often illegal opportunities to earn money - from factory jobs and domestic service to bar work and prostitution.

It is a gateway of recruiters and pimps who entice girls and young women into low-paid domestic or sweatshop work to the country's many bars and brothels, especially Manila.

Young people who are being trafficked are surprisingly easy to spot. Often they have been recruited in their hometowns and go in groups accompanied by a single adult minder who intends to place them in jobs (confirmed or as yet unfixed) in their destinations. They are usually under strict orders to stick together and tell anyone who asks that they are 18 or above.

In a situational study conducted by VF at the Sasa Port last November 2001 among 70 respondents including 23 children (below 18 years old) and 47 women, the following basic profile of trafficking in Davao can was revealed:
56% of migrants are 19 to 23 years old, some are as young a 14 years old

They come mostly from North Cotabato (25%), Davao Oriental (20%), Davao City (17%) and Davao del Norte (14%), Davao del Sur (9%), Compostella (9%), Butuan City (6%).

There are as many first-time migrants (43%) as those who are going back again to work mostly as domestics (70%) in Manila. Eighty percent (80%) of the first-timers to Manila are usually 15-17 years old.

Two out of three declared they have not signed any work contract.

About 71% claimed they asked permission from their parents.

Many travel in groups of three to about ten with their recruiters.

They prefer domestic work because "one does not need to show diplomas, birth certificates, and other qualifications to be hired immediately." Parents also agreed to allow their children because they usually travel in groups and come along with friends and townmates anyway.

The port is also notorious place for children in transit. The port itself is full of illegal recruiters, pimps and vultures trying to entice stranded girls and young women into low paid domestic work or into covert bars and brothels and other underworld activities.