There was some excitement at the port of Dumaguete last Thursday when 77 men from Hinobaan, Negros Occidental, were stopped as they were en route to Zamboanga.
The men, who came in two buses, were stopped by port police on suspicion of being trafficked persons.
Members of the City’s Interagency Council for Anti-Trafficking went to the scene and questioned the men. It turned out they were on their way to Zamboanga to work for a fishing company. They were allegedly recruited by a boat captain who had no authority from the fishing company.
This, the Council found, was a prima facie case for trafficking in persons, even though the men denied they were recruited but were merely going together as a group to file their applications for a job in a fishing boat in Zamboanga.
The story seemed too good to be true, like they were well-rehearsed on the matter. It was like taking one desperate option.
Human trafficking is the trade of people, most commonly for forced labor, commercial sexual exploitation, or other inhuman purposes.
They can be as simple as recruiting people on the pretext of a job as house helpers, but these recruits soon realize they are made to work in brothels or in some factory that does not give them adequate pay, living quarters, nor food.
Negros Oriental is either a source of trafficked persons or is a transit point.
Despite all the efforts of authorities to put a stop to this problem, however, trafficking in persons keeps getting more prevalent. One cause for the proliferation of trafficking is the lack of jobs in their hometowns.
We had a job fair here recently where only a very small percentage of applicants were hired, due to a mismatch between available jobs and the skills of the applicants.
Providing jobs to constituents is always a promise of politicians before the elections.
There are also several skills training sessions being conducted by the Technical Educational Skills Development Authority, which even won for its former chairman a seat in the Senate.
Sadly, it seems that these 77 men did not know or even hear of these opportunities. They seemed to just wait for some pied piper to come along and follow his tune.
Today, more than ever, the people, especially those at the grassroots, need to know their options. They deserve better information on what their elected officials could actually do for them, as promised.
