Economic hardship and job losses linked to the ongoing Middle East conflict are creating fertile ground for illegal recruiters targeting Filipino workers, Sen. Raffy Tulfo cautioned lawmakers during a Senate hearing Thursday.
Tulfo, speaking before the Senate Committee on Labor, Employment, and Human Resources Development, pointed to specific cases where Filipinos were lured under false pretenses — among them women recruited as massage therapists for Malaysia placements who allegedly ended up in exploitative conditions, and applicants enticed by high-salary offers in Japan and Canada who arrived to find fraudulent or abusive arrangements waiting for them.
“With the desperation of people today, opportunities have opened up for those who want to abuse Filipino workers’ needs and to hire them for illegal jobs,” Tulfo said.
The senator connected the vulnerability of job seekers to broader economic pressures, including displacement caused by the return of OFWs forced home by conflict in the Middle East. Workers in urgent need of income, he argued, become easier targets for unscrupulous recruiters.
“Many of us are seeking opportunities abroad to have a stable job. But when people are in need, they accept illegal jobs; they are either forced into it, or they easily fall for the job offers of illegal recruiters,” Tulfo said in Filipino.
He called on the committee to scrutinize whether penalties for illegal recruitment and trafficking are stringent enough to serve as genuine deterrents, noting that violations persist despite an existing body of laws and policies aimed at curbing them.
“It seems lacking,” he said of the current accountability framework.
