Anti-trafficking project receives US aid

By Sheryll B. Casanova, Reporter
Wednesday, December 10, 2003

THE 14-year-old girl managed to smile for the first time after more than a year of ordeal as a slave in the hands of three masters.

Rachelle, a resident of Sawang, Masbate, is just one of the 1,400 women and children who are being taken care of by Bahay Silungan, a small halfway house in North Harbor being managed and run by the Visayan Forum Foundation, Inc. (VFFI) in partnership with the Philippine Ports Authority, the Philippine Coast Guard and shipping lines in the country.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador to the Philippines Francis J. Ricciardone visited the shelter and committed a P7.4-million grant for two years for VFFI in support of the fight against trafficking in persons.

"Bahay Silungan is a real celebration of love, compassion, courage," Ricciardone said in a speech onboard WG&A's Super­ferry 12 after his short visit to the shelter.

Rachelle said she feels safe at Bahay Silungan and hopes that she can join her family this Christmas.

Like most of the other victims, who are mostly from Visayas and Mindanao, she was recruited as a helper. She first worked as a housemaid in Manila.

But being so young, she missed her friends and family and decided to run away.

However, her recruiter got her again and brought her to Muntinlupa where she served as porter in a vegetable market. She worked there for two months earning P1,200 a month. Having a thin built, she couldn't handle the job and ran away again. She wanted to go home but did not know where to go.

She was crying on a sidewalk when another woman approached her, brought her to a friend and made her work for eight months as a helper. They agreed on the condition that she would get P1,000 a month. But her new master did not pay what is due her.

A neighbor, after knowing her plight, brought her to the Department of Social Welfare and Development. The government agency on Monday brought her to the care of Bahay Silungan.

Aside from domestic work, VFFI President Ma. Cecilia Flores-Oebanda said trafficked women and children also went to prostitution, forced labor and child labor.

Michi, 15, is another trafficked person, but was saved from prostitution. She is now enrolled in a regular school as one of VFFI scholars and being trained as anti-human trafficking advocate.

Trafficking, under Republic Act 9208 or the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act, refers to "the recruitment, transfer or harboring or receipt of persons... by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or of position or taking advantage of the vulnerability of the person... for the purpose of exploitation."

The International Labor Organization estimates that in 2002 alone, some 1.2 million children worldwide fell victims of trafficking.

Southeast Asia is source to some 225,000 trafficked women and children, according to the US Trafficking in Persons Report of 2003. The report recognizes that trafficking is a complex and a massive problem in the Philippines, being a source, transit and destination country of victims.

The VFFI said that in the Philippines many children from poor provinces are trafficked into brothels, factories and other worst forms of child labor. According to data from the National Statistics Office, six out of ten of the four million child laborers in 2001, or around 2.4 million, work in hazardous situations, away from their families.