Back from KL

It’s thirty minutes past midnight. Am here at the airport terminal in Kuala Lumpur waiting for boarding time. The airport I am in has free WiFi. This is where budget fare flights like that of Cebu Pacific’s take off and land. A cafe espresso sells giant donuts a few feet from where I sit while a duty-free outlet beckons with its perfumes and chocolates. Not bad for a comparatively small airport in the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur. Now if it only had a bookshop right past the immigration counter.

My four days in KL was quite productive. I was able to join the embassy staff and Filipino community in celebrating Independence Day. With my good friend, Rey Sto. Domingo and the DFA’s Mendel Rivera, I was able to interview victims of human trafficking who have sought refuge at the Filipino Workers’ Resource Center, an extension of the Office of the Labor Attache. Their stories were heartbreaking. While listening to each victim (there were around 7 of them), a pattern emerges. Four of them were medically unfit to work abroad and they knew it. Their recruiter promised a way around this predicament. All victims were promised immediate deployment through a “fly now, pay later” scheme which turned out to be an exploitative salary deduction arrangement. Their exit point was the Clark airport. All of them were told which immigration counter to line up for. One OFW said the immigration agent actually came to see her at the parking lot and told her to remember his face so she’d know which counter to approach.

Upon arriving in KL, the pattern continues: someone was there to meet them and those promised jobs as domestic helpers were driven off in a vehicle while those who eventually and against their will – ended up in nightclubs and hotel rooms — were fetched by a different car. At one time or another, these girls were brought to an apartment owned by a Singaporean named Alfred Lim (not our Manila Mayor!). Lim would slap them whenever they ran away or tried to ask for their wages or wanted a different, more friendly employer. This Lim obviously has connections in Manila and can go in and out of our country. Lim has a network of “agents” that scour the countryside for victims of human trafficking to Malaysia. How does he earn? He makes our women OFWs work for months without salaries while telling them that they cannot collect their salaries or leave their employers unless their debts to him are paid off (which is never because he continuously raises the amount of salary deductions). Meanwhile, the employers have already advanced their payments to Lim and his syndicate sometimes for a whole year without the workers knowing it.
I encouraged the victims to get in touch with the Blas F. Ople Center once they arrive in Manila. They seemed determined to file charges against their recruiters here and their agents in Malaysia. I am keeping my fingers crossed that they actually do this. However, previous experiences have taught me that once these victims arrive, their priorities change and the desire to keep what happened a personal secret becomes even more compelling. Unfortunately, it is this attitude and desire that keep scoundrels like Alfred Lim strutting around and destroying the lives of so many Filipino women.

So if you know of anyone who is being lured to work in Malaysia and promised a quick departure under a “fly now, pay later” scheme with either the international airport at Clark, Pampanga or any airport or seaport elsewhere, stop her. And if she utters the name of her recruiter as a certain Alfred Lim, then do what you can to convince her to report the incident to the POEA or NBI.  Remember – tourist workers are not allowed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia or in virtually most countries. If you want to work abroad, do it legitimately – with a valid work contract processed by a licensed agency of good standing registered with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.