FIGHT HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE PHILIPPINES

FIGHT HUMAN TRAFFICKING IN THE PHILIPPINES

By Belarmino Dabalos Saguing

One of the biggest exports from the Philippines is humans. About 11 percent of the country’s 92 million people work overseas. 

Human trafficking used to be number three (crime). Now, it has overtaken the (illegal) arms trade and it is number two globally, the number of people worldwide in forced labour at 20.9 million -- 5.5 million of them children. The Philippines, which has almost more than million citizens working overseas, was particularly vulnerable to human trafficking with many women going abroad for legitimate jobs only to be forced into prostitution.

Labor migration is a way of life for Filipinos and a big business. Overseas workers sent the equivalent oifg almost 20 million U.S. dollars back to the Philippines recently. That total has increased steadily over the last decade.

And amid this booming business, lurk unscrupulous recruiters, both domestic and foreign, who prey on Filipinos. Few overseas workers complain. That's because slave-like conditions elsewhere, can still mean more prosperity than what's available at home.

This is not an exclusively  Filipino problem. This is a problem of every underdeveloped country in the world with a government milking its overseas workers for remittances to prop up sinking economies they refuse to fix. Unemployment in the Philippines stood at 7.5 percent of the labor force, which means around three million in April 2013 compared to 6.9 percent for the same month last year. About 31 percent of Filipinos are engaged in agriculture. A decrease in the sector means lost opportunities for people in the rural areas.

The root of the problem can be traced to the present and previous administrations that made our economy “export oriented.” Instead of modernizing our agricultural sector to achieve food independence and provide a base for developing our local industries, it has been reduced to a mere provider of food products for foreign supermarkets and tables. Also,  the government has been pushing hard for “labor export” and “business process outsourcing” while programs for agricultural modernization and genuine agrarian reform along with the creation of labor-generating industries have been ignored.

Unemployment worsened to 7.5 percent last April, the highest in three years, despite the 7.8 percent growth in the economy. There were 3.09 million unemployed in the country as of April, up from 2.89 million in January.

The lowered living condition in the country due to the increasing unemployment is making the Filipinos more vulnerable to illegal labor recruitment and humana trafficking.

STOP HUMAN TRAFFICKING!!!

CREATE JOBS AT HOME, NOT LABOR EXPORT PROGRAMS!!!