Maldives being used as a transit point by illegal recruiters: Philippines

The Philippines’ Bureau of Immigration has declared it is tightening monitoring of Filipino nationals traveling to the Maldives, over fears the country is being used as a transit point for labour trafficking of its citizens.

The government of the Philippines, which depends heavily on remitted income from its massive expatriate workforce, restricts its nationals from working in countries with a record of poor treatment of low-wage foreign workers, such as Lebanon and Jordan.

However the Bureau’s Immigration Minister Ricardo David Jr issued a statement revealing traffickers were circumventing this restriction by obtaining ‘legitimate’ employment papers for workers in Dubai and the Maldives, and routing workers to restricted countries through these destinations.

David revealed 17 Filipino workers were victimised in such a fashion by illegal recruitment agencies in June, noting that none of the workers had employment contracts and had instead only been ‘promised’ salaries of US$300-$1500 a month once they reach their destination.

The Maldives is recognised as a destination country for labour trafficking, and to a lesser extent, sex trafficking. Various reports into the practice have identified key appeals to traffickers in the form of poor oversight and monitoring of work permit requests, and a near-total lack of enforcement or investigation of traffickers in favour of swiftly deporting victims – many of whom go into substantial debt paying bogus ‘recruitment fees’ of up to US$4000.

However the statement from the Philippines suggests the country’s lack of oversight of foreign worker employment is also being exploited by traffickers to transit victims.

Domestically, “Recruitment agents in source countries collude with employers and agents in Maldives to facilitate fraudulent recruitment and forced labor of migrant workers”, read a recent report from the US State Department’s human trafficking monitoring office.

Despite widespread acknowledgement of the practice and the government’s submission of a draft anti-trafficking bill to parliament in December 2012, the Maldives still has no specific laws prohibiting human trafficking and “the government of the Maldives made minimal anti-trafficking enforcement efforts during the year.”

While forced labour was prohibited under the 2009 Employment Act, it was not penalised, the report noted.

“The government reported investigating four and prosecuting two sex trafficking cases in 2012, compared to no prosecutions recorded in 2011,” the report stated.

However “the government did not report any prosecutions of government employees for alleged complicity in trafficking-related offenses [and] the absence of government translators prevented foreign trafficking victims from pursuing recourse through the Maldivian legal system.”

The Maldives was placed on the US State Department’s Tier Two Watch List for Human Trafficking for the fourth consecutive year, and faces mandatory downgrading to Tier 3 next year along with Afghanistan, Barbados, Chad, Malaysia, Thailand unless it addresses the problem.

Tier 3 countries are defined by the State Department as those which “neither satisfy the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking nor demonstrate a significant effort to do so”, and are open to non-humanitarian and non-trade international sanctions.

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13 thoughts on “Maldives being used as a transit point by illegal recruiters: Philippines”

  1. Then just don't allow Filipino's to enter our country.
    They are only here to enjoy their own things, like karoake, and they don't want to adjust to our culture.
    Sex trafficking? They enjoy it too much and are only here for that, they should stay in their own country

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  2. If you pay the right people--you can do anything you want in the Maldives..

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  3. So much has happened in less than two years that puts Maldives as a country that cannot be trusted. Sooner or later, we would be on our own.

    *** Existence of suicide bombers
    -domestic (the park issue) and international(bombing of Pakistan intelligence office, training in Afghanistan)
    *** Drugs and International criminal
    -A hub and transit route for hard drugs (exitence of high quality heroine, cocaine, harsh, in larget quantities) -a safe heaven for local and international criminals
    *** The Con-country in business
    -too many businessmen and companies have been cheated and contracts/agreements ignored by local businesses and even the government
    *** Human trafficking
    -illegal immigrants paying thousands of dollars in exchange of jobs which most never get. Over 50k Bangladesh roam the streets with no papers, and hundreds of Phillipinos/Indonesians lured into prostitution in the name of beauty parlors
    ***Religious extremism
    -open hatred towards jews, christians and other faiths. Pushing sharia law to be imposed
    ***Sex crimes
    -abuse on helpless women, young girls and increase in pedophiles.
    ***Counterfeit currencies and duplicating of credit/debit cards

    The list goes on and on.

    It is a fact something very fishy if you consider the recent abrupt influx of Phillipinos into Maldives. They are in every resort and many companies in Male not as house maids or waitresses like in many countries, but in key positions which require very skilled qualified personnel. In a year or two, they move on to middle east thereby using Maldives as a spring-board.

    On many occasions we have seen our police proudly parading Philipino girls on media accused for prostitution in beauty parlous and massage centers. This is absolutely NOT FAIR because it is a Maldivian who brought them into Maldives to indulge in this lucrative business whose customers are 99% Maldivians. Immigration nor the police have never come up with the Maldivian ring leaders but paint Phillipines a country full of prostitutes (NOT TRUE)...not forgetting a majority of prostitutes today in Maldives are Maldivians.

    So what is the future of Maldives?

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  4. Come now it's just our culture. We Dhivehistanis are allowed to keep slaves and trade in them - and yes, even to copulate with them. It is our Allah ordained right. Our religious freedom. Why should we let Catholic Phlilipinos dictate what we can and cannot do? Next they'll want us to drink wine, eat pork and declare Jesus our Lord and Savior. Allah forbid!

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  5. I am disgusted that countries give money to the Maldives in Aid. I shall seek to help stop this at once.

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  6. Good call by the Filipino people. I hope this clamps down on the supply of sex slaves available to the filthy mullahs and their gangs.

    The best way to destroy a decadent empire is to prevent them from using slave labor.

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  7. Well, the sexually repressed inbred population of the Maldives would need to fulfill their sexual desires, Islam or not. Add to this the huge human trafficking problem, and there you go. A large number of filipino prostitutes, forced to have sex with mostly married, religious men who would afterwards be seen in sajida at the local mosque, often heard parroting statements of violence against jews.

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  8. I am wondering what it is good to be a Muslim? Is it only to go to some fantasy world of lust? If this is the only reason to be a Musilm, I don’t think I like Islam. America the Shaithan is issuing warning to Muslim God fearing Maldives for human trafficking and violating human rights.

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  9. Mordis is a sad story.

    Mordis has been chucked away in the corner of the world, and fell head-long into trap-religion. It wasn't difficult either; the proverbial frog in the pond fits us like a glove.

    As with all religions, we are born with the guilt of having been sinned since birth, and forever in need of atonement. We have to hurt ourselves to makeup for the piling sins, of which we have no control.

    That is the model for controlling men. People. Make them feel guilty and occupy them with self hurt, hurting their neighbours. The more they do, the more religious they feel. It relieves the controllers of having to worry about mutiny.

    1) don't ever have a full night sleep. Have to getup to do some stupid bowing.
    2) hurt your body by fasting, sunup to sundown. Little do they know that the supposed covers-all story, have no solution for the arctic dwellers, where the sun sets/rises once every 6 months. Hibernation perhaps? Like polar bears?
    3) taught that even to question, is tantamount to you being a dog, unworthy of living in this world.
    4) little do they know that stats are similar. If an airplane crashes in a country, another one has an earth quake, another a landslide, another a tsunami, in another a volcano erupts, another a plague runs amok, etc. indifferent to your beiiefs.
    Yet, some say they are privileged?

    May be it is the best way to manage peoe. keep them uneducated; by keeping people ignorant? Mordis is a beacon example!

    To keep us happy, carrots are thrown. Slavery, sex with concubines is the one that has all salivating.

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  10. Andrew. Mind your own things and we don't care when you put the cow shits on your forehead and pray it twice daily.

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  11. so the Philippines will limit or maybe stop their citizen to work in maldives.what country will be next to avoid sending their citizen to work here in maldives, maybe India, bangladesh, nepal, sri lanka & so on...neighboring country is starting to notice the human trafficking in Maldives & doing the necessary precaution to avoid this country. Change must start at the very center of Maldives not in the outside country but i think that change will not happen as i am seeing the so called leaders of the country are mostly corrupt & accusing each opponent of their wrong doings.

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  12. Kuribee.

    Yes. Mind my own business. That's good. Typical answer expected from a Mullah backed clown.

    Irony is : I know deep down in you, you feel what I have said; you want to believe that; and if you are not so afraid of the mullahs, you would voice your inner thoughts out aloud, which would be more violent, for you would feel violated for having been misled for so long!

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