Action in Ports. Since August 2000, the Visayan Forum Foundation (VF) operated a halfway house called "Balay Silungan sa Daungan."

Located at the Manila North Harbor (fronting pier 8) it provides the following 24-hour services for trafficking victims:

• Emergency temporary shelter towards reintegration
• Informational assistance about travel, employment and possible support networks
• Quick referral of cases, including legal remediation
• Telephone hotline counselling
• Regular outreach for stranded passengers
• Training and advocacy to port community members such as the police, coast guard, shipping crew, porters and security guards

There is now also a similar halfway house in Sasa Port, Davao City. This joint project with the Philippine Ports Authority - Gender and Development Focal Point Program is perhaps the first of its kind in the Asian shipping industry. It thrives on the collective efforts of government, business community, and worker's organizations inside the port.

Mobilizing the Port Community

The port is a complex, living organism that is constantly changing. Any intervention envisioned to be institutionalized in this community must also learn to adapt to this vibrancy. The creative synergies developed at this point of intervention in the port hopes to expand outside the port community in addressing the other complicated requirements of a solid mechanism in attacking the problem of child trafficking in the field of legislation and enforcement, justice and total child protection.

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.

The Department of Labor and Employment quickly acts to verify recruiters' work permits as to the legality of employment agencies and workplace destinations.

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

Major partners from the private employers sector are the shipping companies. They 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 halfway 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 usually are reached out by the shipping crew, including their in-land staff. Shipping companies also support the 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.

Other significant players are the workers groups who 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.

For more details, see Press Release_combating child trafficking.doc (Business World, October 26-27, 2001)