PROSECUTORS from the Department of Justice
has pressed charges of human trafficking against a
Malaysia-based Singa-porean who leads a human trafficking
syndicate that has lured hundreds of Filipinas, including
minors, to prostitution with false offers of overseas jobs as
housemaids or waitresses.
The legal team, led by assistant chief state
prosecutor Severino Gana, went to Malaysia on Monday with Ople
Center president Susan Ople and two of the victims who filed
charges against an alias Alfred Lim.
The group met with Malaysian police chief
Musa Hassan who assigned the case to high-ranking police
officials. By the next day, Lim and his Malaysian wife had been
arrested by police.
The suspects allegedly have accomplices in
the Philippines who are paid for every individual that they
could send to Malaysia.
Based on the accounts of two of his victims,
Lim owns a recruitment agency in Malaysia that lure mostly
barely legal women to work as domestic helpers or waitresses
there, with promises of good pay and excellent working
conditions. His recruits eventually end up in brothels with no
salary, little food and lots of maltreatment. Others were lucky
to have been made to just work long hours as domestic helpers.
The two victims, whose names were withheld
for their safety, said they were escorted through the Diosdado
Macapagal International Airport by two immigration agents and
upon reaching Kuala Lumpur were abused by the Singaporean who
bragged to Filipino maids under his control that in Malaysia, he
was "god."
The DOJ’s inter-agency council against trafficking and the
civil rights group Blas F. Ople Policy Center are helping the
victims recover from the trauma. They called on other victims to
come out and press charges against Lim. – Evangeline C. de
Vera
