THE Philippines under the Marcos administration has kept its Tier 1 Ranking in the United States Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report for 2023.

The PNP said the good ranking has given the Philippines more reason to continue the massive drive against POGO hubs in the country, the Journal Group learned.

It was the 8th year in a row that the United States has recognized the Philippine government’s anti-TIP campaign.

A Tier 1 ranking means that the country fully meets the minimum standards set by the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act (US TVPA) although it likewise provides yearly recommendations to augment the government’s anti-TIP efforts.

The U.S. TIP Report released last June highlighted nine prioritized recommendations that include the following:

investigate and prosecute traffickers and complicit officials as well as punish them with significant prison terms;

augment efforts to assist labor trafficking victims by providing additional trainings for law enforcers, service providers and labor inspectors on the red flags of this type of trafficking;

further capacitate local government units in the reintegration of victim-survivors through trauma-informed care, job training and in-country employment;

provide more support for government and NGO-based programs for specialized treatments for victim-survivors especially for child victims;

engage the survivors in drafting policies, programs and trainings by incorporating their inputs; assist the victims to receive their court-ordered compensation through civil judgment;

increase the funding for the different anti-trafficking task forces of the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) to ensure that they are able to fully perform their mandates;

ensure that there is a consistent inter-agency response to provide services to distressed overseas Filipinos rescued from sex and labor trafficking; and

create a centralized database of human trafficking organized crime groups and cases to ensure proper inter-agency coordination.

In the past three years, the previous TIP Reports have called the attention of the Philippine government to address a number of deficiencies in its efforts to fight modern-day slavery.

For example, its 2022 version noted that the Philippines failed to vigorously run after traffickers who paid for commercial sex from trafficking victims nor was the government able to provide sufficient training for labor inspectors to identify the red flags of labor trafficking, just to name a few.

The U.S. 2021 TIP Report underscored the government’s failure to convict public officials who facilitated trafficking crimes as well as the inadequate resources provided for law enforcement agencies.

President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ R. Marcos Jr. called for a new set of leaders to take over the helm of the IACAT and the Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission to fight trafficking in persons shortly after he took over as the new president on June 30, 2022.

Last March 13, President Marcos tasked the IACAT and the PACC to lead in putting an end to the modus operandi of labor trafficking that victimizes Filipinos in Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The two agencies were also mandated to do the same against cryptocurrency scammers who victimize Filipinos and foreigners in the country.

PAOCC chairman Executive Secretary Lucas P. Bersamin instructed PAOCC Executive Director Gilbert DC Cruz to coordinate with the member agencies of the IACAT in providing assistance to distressed Filipinos in Myanmar.

This prompted the PAOCC Executive Director to hold a series of talks with Colonel Dominador Matalang, Philippine police attache in Thailand, to assure Filipinos in Myawaddy, Myanmar that the Philippine government is ready to assist them.

The Philippine embassies in Thailand and Myanmar are in-charge of the government’s assistance package to distressed Pinoys in the two countries.

Since the PAOCC-supported program started last May 16, a total of 43 distressed Overseas Filipino Workers in Thailand and Myanmar have been assisted by the OPA Thailand and the PAOCC.

Their number complements those that have already been assisted by the IACAT, the Department of Migrant Workers and the Department of Foreign Affairs-Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers.

Moreover, PAOCC officers have assisted four Filipinas who have been victimized by sex trafficking syndicates in Labuan, Malaysia.

The anti-crime commission is continuously reaching out to its counterparts in Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia to seek help in finding distressed Filipinos in their territories.

Likewise, the PAOCC had supported the Philippine National Police and other law enforcement agencies during its anti-trafficking operations at the Clark Development Corporation in Mabalacat City, Pampanga. Nearly 1,400 foreigners and Filipinos were rescued in those operations.

The victims were found to have been employed by a well-organized foreign crime group operating a cryptocurrency scam hub inside Clark. Undersecretary Cruz has been in constant coordination with Department of Justice Undersecretary Nicholas Felix Ty to ensure the repatriation of all the foreign victims and the prosecution of the foreign suspects and their local facilitators.

“A whole-of-government approach rooted on the best practices of other nations who have been successful in this fight is needed to ensure that the Philippines remains in the Tier 1 ranking for the duration of the current Marcos administration.

More than the desired ranking, a proactive government set of programs against trafficking in persons is needed to protect our countrymen from this modern-day slavery,” said Undersecretary Cruz.

Last August 1, a PAOCC-led anti-human trafficking and online scam raid on a Pasay City-based Philippine Offshore Gaming Operator or POGO firm led to the detention of 650 men and women, 186 of them foreigners found to be engaged in various hi-tech fraud.

Government agents served eight Warrants to Seize, Search and Examine Computer Data of the Rivendell Gaming Corporation, Inc.

The PAOCC reported that during the search, many of the company employees were caught in the act of operating digital platforms that were engaged in a number of illegal online activities such as love scams and pig butchering, online games manipulations and other forms of online investment frauds.

It added that a number of mobile phones seized during the operation were still accepting GCash payments from their purported victims at the time of the raid.

During interviews, the operating units were able to ascertain that the said POGO operated with an almost identical operating procedure with the previously raided POGO hub in Sun Valley Clark.

They had the same character development manual as well as incentive mechanism. The only difference was the absence of a detention and punishment facility given that the scammers are allowed to regularly go home.

Sadly, the operating unit was able to identify at least one Filipina scammer who was previously rescued by the Commission from one of its supported rescue operations in Myanmar.

The PAOCC said that during the raid, 464 Filipinos and 186 foreigners, mostly Asians, were discovered operating the hub’s numerous digital platforms.

Of the 650 employees, 300 are males while the rest are females.

During the raid inside the Clark Freeport Zone-based POGO hub-turned main base of online scammers last May 4, the PAOCC and the PNP Anti-Cybercrime Group discovered that the online scammers were being treated like slaves by the operators who ask them to pay huge fines for infractions of so-many company rules.