By Roland Pacis, Visayan Forum Foundation, Inc. May 28, 2002

Fellow visitors in the port: good afternoon. We thank you for dropping by, curious about our program. I said "fellow visitors" because we are actually accidental operators of a unique program by the Philippine Ports Authority. They have chosen us from the Visayan Forum to operate probably the first of its kind anti-trafficking strategy in the Asian shipping industry: a halfway house for victimized women and children stranded, intercepted or who flee from their recruiters as they pass by the Manila Port.

Come July, we will have been operating here for two years already. Two fruitful years of exploring what can be done in practical terms to check illegal recruitment in one of the Asia's busiest ports that is hub to around 5 million passengers a year.

Frankly we don't have exact numbers how many are illegally recruited through this port. The sheer volume of people embarking and disembarking is in itself a big challenge. But we are constant witnesses to the everyday realities of trafficking in this gateway.

Victims are very young, mostly female 14- 22 years old from poor regions in the south. Many are first-timers in Manila, often with only a one-way ticket at hand. Based on our study, thirteen out of twenty (65%) of children travel to their destinations without any information about their destination, work, and employers. Due to absence of protective mechanisms, six out of ten (62%) revealed that their fare is deducted from their salary and 50% to 70% is added as a finder's pay by the recruiters. Some 18% of children could not adjust with the language. Many confided that they met problems related to having not enough money or none at all during the voyage (31%).

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

What the statistics did not show but later on became more evident in the case profiles of victims temporarily sheltered in the halfway house is that most parents believe that domestic work is safest so they easily fall prey to false promises by illegal recruiters and even townmates. One does not need to show diplomas, birth certificates, and other qualifications to be hired immediately.

It is also realistic to observe that even before searching for work in the overseas labor market, many young women and children have at least ventured in other cities inside the country. They eventually seek lucrative opportunities overseas, after gaining some experience and contact in bigger local cities. Many of course are recruited directly using false ages and passport names, and are about to be slipped into some training or processing center. But we increasingly intercept them with the help of the port police.

The Visayan Forum Foundation (VF) is a non-governmental organization that generally works on the issue of domestic workers, mostly hidden, scattered and invisible to the law. It recently took the cudgels of operating the second halfway house built by PPA in Davao City just around twenty months after starting our work here inside this Manila port area. We provide 24-hour safety and catchment services for trafficking victims including temporary shelter, help-desk assistance about travel, quick case referrals and telephone hotline counseling.

• Emergency temporary shelter - We exist to provide a safe place in the port while waiting for the proper inspection of recruiter's permits and records. Our end in mind is to work for the victims' eventual reintegration with their families.
• Informational assistance - We inform passengers about the issue of trafficking, and assist them about travel, employment and possible support networks, including contact with their parents. We also help them find or connect with their relatives in Manila to ensure that they are accessible and visible.
• Quick referral of cases - Victims have multiple needs, not just legal action against their recruiters. We therefore refer them to the specialized NGOs and the social welfare department, which can properly and speedily repatriate them.
• Regular pier roundings - Our volunteers comb the terminals. They provide stranded victims with contact numbers so they can call us in times of needs. Today shipping crews consciously check passengers on board who attempt to break free from illegal recruiters.
• Telephone hotline counseling - as a form of support mechanism to those who successfully land in work but are still adjusting to city life or are exposed to exploitative conditions.
• Training and advocacy - for port community members, to create a protective network in terms reporting cases, and interception of suspected traffickers.

VF works to build sustained efforts not only with the Philippine Ports Authority but also ferry companies, the Coast Guard, Port Police, security guards and porters. We will not be here forever. Such catchment network is strengthened by the creative synergy with external collaborators and government agencies especially in verifying recruiters' work permits, workplace visitation and taking legal actions or removal operations when needed.

The Philippine Ports Authority, our joint partner, broke its regular mandate of port services and expanded into a deeper sense of social responsibility, by tying up with an NGO to run a half-way house for stranded and trafficked women and children. The agreement has since extended to 5 years and expanding to other major ports in the Philippines, including Visayas and Mindanao.

Almost all the agencies under the PPA were mandated to support the program. Examples of these are the port police and the coastguard, who routinely check suspected traffickers once the ferry has docked and passengers are about to disembark. Officers patrol the passenger decks regularly, and invite fetchers of organized groups before they pack the recruits in transportation bays. Using this method, they have turned over to the halfway house more than 400 cases since last year.

The Department of Labor and Employment has always quickly acted on our request by verifying recruiters' work permits as to the legality of employment agencies and workplace destinations.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development helps us with our referred cases, repatriation, and reintegration of intercepted victims and potential victims of child trafficking. Their regional offices help us locate and coordinate with the family of the children.

Major partners from the private employers sector are the shipping companies. They support our program by offering discounted fare rates to repatriated children. No less than the ferry managers of a shipping company, the WG&A ensure safe custody during travel of repatriated children and personally turn over them to the local social workers who fetch the children in their destinations. They also help arrange for general orientations of their own shipping crew on the issue of trafficking. As a result, some of the crew referred cases to the half-way house and some give information or contact numbers to children suspected of being victims of trafficking during the voyage. This kind of help provides useful information to children to avoid abuse and exploitation in their work destination. Some of the children who accessed our telephone hotlines are usually reached out by the shipping crew, including their in-land staff.

Our partners in the workers groups are mainly composed of stevedores, porters, cargo handlers and vendors. They have been helping in their own way stranded passengers in the past when the program was not yet set up. Like other partners in port communities they continue to refer children who they discovered to be stranded in the port or children who escaped from their employers. They even give us food staples for children's consumption in the center.

Expectedly, many recruiters are now forewarned of our catchment efforts hence changing their facilitation patterns. Still 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. Building efforts by other groups in the port is therefore crucial.

The cultural acceptance to migration also lends a high degree of acceptability to recruitment in poor communities, legal or otherwise. Having a family member work away from home infuses the much-needed cash into the cycle of debt and bondage, thereby enhancing their family's social status in the province.

Such effort may possibly be the only one of its kind in the Asian shipping industry. In closing, may we encourage you to study three concrete recommendations:

• To replicate the model in other strategic ports around the country and in Asia as part of integrated national anti-trafficking programs. We can also adopt and expand the model in other transit points via land and air conduits.
• To connect these efforts into the increasingly recognized plight of domestic workers who themselves recruit fellow youngsters into invisible work in the cities.
• To recognize the links between causes and modalities of internal and external migration. The simple reason is that internal migration helps slingshot country-to-country migration.

Thank you for visiting us, and we look forward to meeting you again.