Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. on Tuesday praised the initiative of Sen. Risa Hontiveros to conduct a Senate inquiry on the human trafficking of Filipino women to Syria.
“Great job, Risa. We need that. We cannot afford to relax or let any abuse pass because it is too much trouble to fix,” Locsin said in a tweet.
In support of the lady senator’s effort, Locsin has instructed the Department of Foreign Affairs to ensure that Philippine Embassy in Damascus Chargé d’Affaires Vida Soraya Versoza will participate in the Senate hearing.
“Absolutely, thank you, Risa. DFA will connect Senate to CDA in Damascus--a no-nonsense ballbuster and with the four replacements I sent her sure to do even better. Make sure CDA is part of Senate session,” he said.
In a television interview on Tuesday, Hontiveros bared that the trafficking scheme of Filipino workers to Syria is made possible with the alleged connivance between travel agencies and Immigration officials in exchange for a P50,000 fee per passenger.
Upon reaching the Middle East, the illegally deployed Filipino workers are “bought” by employers, mostly ending up being subjected to abuse. Hontiveros said at least three women have sought the help of her office.
Hontiveros blasted the scheme to send Filipino women workers to Syria as a ‘modern-day slavery’ reportedly perpetuated by immigration officers.
In late January this year, the influential American newspaper The Washington Post published a story exposing the alleged abuse of trafficked overseas Filipino workers at the Philippine embassy in Damascus, Syria.
In a story entitled “Sold Into Syrian Servitude, Filipina Workers Tell of Abuse, Rape and Imprisonment," the newspaper recounts the ordeal of Filipino women who were originally recruited to work in the United Arab Emirates but ended up being trafficked to Syria.
The trafficked OFWs narrated in the story how their employers physically and sexually abused them and denied them the salaries they were promised.
While housed at the Philippine Embassy shelter in Damascus, many of the 35 trafficked OFWs complained of poor living conditions, their phones being confiscated and common punishment of denying them breakfast for two weeks for sneaking extra food from the kitchen.
This prompted Locsin to remove former CDA Alex Lamadrid and four other embassy staffers and replaced them with another set of foreign service officers from the Home Office led by Versoza.
The majority, if not all of the trafficked women in the Embassy shelter, were already repatriated back to the Philippines.