Bureau of Immigration(BI) officers have arrested two fake Filipino seamen at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) trying to fly out of the country.
BI port operations chief Grifton Medina said they were intercepted at the departure area of the NAIA while about to board a Cathay Pacific flight to Hongkong en route to Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Medina said the duo presented fake overseas employment certificates (OECs), seaman’s books, and letters of guarantee from their alleged shipping agent.
The two passengers, whose names were not divulged as the law prohibits it, were turned over to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) for further investigation.
Medina said that during investigation the duo admitted that they paid their handler P5,000 each for the counterfeit documents.
“The recruiters may have believed that we will be lenient in screening the papers of departing seamen,” and that “they (recruiters) are mistaken because we screen all departing passengers thoroughly to prevent Filipinos from being victimized by illegal labor recruiters.”
BI travel control and enforcement unit chief Timotea Barizo said immigration officers are required examine the papers of all OFWs, including seafarers, before they are cleared for departure.
In the case of the two bogus seamen, Ms. Barizo said the scheme was immediately uncovered when an immigration officer found that their OECs are not registered or encoded in the database of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA).
She stressed that “faking these OECs is an exercise in futility because our systems are now integrated with the POEA, one click and we’ll be able to see if an OFW is properly documented”.
Barizo added that POEA personnel are likewise stationed at the airports to conduct secondary verifications of OFW’S suspicious travel. (Jun Ramirez)