By Christine F. Herrera

A SYNDICATE working within a government agency is illegally recruiting and shipping out thousands of Filipinos abroad, many of whom are sent back for holding fake travel documents, an official said yesterday.

“[The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration] is one big illegal recruitment and human trafficking syndicate,” Immigration Commissioner Marcelino Libanan told Standard Today.

“This syndicate earns close to P2 billion a year at the expense of the government and the very people they have supposedly vowed to serve.”

Libanan, vice chairman of the Task Force Anti-Human Trafficking, says he found out about the syndicate after thousands of Filipinos were sent back for not having valid documents to work abroad, especially in the Middle East.

POEA officials refused to comment to avoid preempting a probe that the National Bureau of Investigation had started following Libanan’s complaint.

“I was helpless at first to see my people at the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation being blamed for those workers being sent home,” Libanan said.

“How did these people get past Immigration in the first place?”

Libanan says he traced the problem to the POEA after he had fielded agents to pose as applicants there for work abroad.

“In cahoots with the illegal recruiters, the POEA would issue clearances to applicants for P15,000 per person,” Libanan said.

“That explains why these workers got past Immigration. Their papers were in order because they had POEA clearances. The question is, why were they being sent back by the host countries?”

Libanan says some 27,000 Filipinos leave each month, but at least 10,000 fall prey to illegal recruiters.

“At P15,000 per person, the syndicate could easily make P150 million a month or about P1.8 billion a year,” Libanan said. POEA records show that the agency issues clearances to about 3,000 workers daily or 90,000 a month.

Following Libanan’s order to intercept workers cleared by the POEA, Immigration men held 46 Filipinos bound for the Middle East on Feb. 3. Of those, 19 were posing as Lebanon-bound tourists, and they were ordered to leave a Thai Airways plane as a result of the ban on Filipinos working in that country.

Two others were supposed to depart for Oman via Bangkok, and three were bound for Syria, Libanan says.

POEA cleared Madelle Mangayaay to work as an accountant in Abu Dhabi, but her visa showed she had been hired as a domestic.

Sitty Kasan and Angeline Molina were also cleared to work as security guards in the same country, but their visas showed they had been hired as a baby sitter and a domestic, respectively.

The same agency cleared Onelia Magbanua and Caren Luna to work as security guards, but they were caught carrying visas to work as waiters.

Qatar-bound Maryjay Cacal was sent to work as a sales clerk in Qatar, but her visa showed she had been hired as a domestic.

“We have discovered that the POEA syndicate does not only make money out of the job orders, but out of the number of people hired to do a non-existent job,” Libanan said.

“What they do is use the job order to hire more people for a single job. They hire a security guard but use the same job order and split the $400 by hiring two more people to work as baby sitters for only $200 each.

“So aside from the $400 per job order and instead of one P15,000 per job order, the syndicate makes an additional P45,000 for the three people they hired for a single job order. But two of the three would be deported.”