MANILA, Philippines — The Bureau of Immigration is warning Filipinos who want to work abroad against dealing with cintract recruiters who promise quick processing of Overseas Employment Certificates that may turn out to be fake, adding it would be easy for the bureau to verify the OECs.
The OEC is a document that Overseas Filipino Workers need to present to immigration officers before they are allowed to leave for work abroad.
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The BI's warning comes after a new batch of six individuals was intercepted at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) in Manila and the Clark International Airport in Pampanga for presenting bogus OECs. All of the victims said they secured their documents through recruiters online.
“Our system is integrated with the [Department of Migrant Workers]’s database, hence it is very easy for us to verify legitimate OECs. Using these fake certificates will no longer work,” Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco said in a statement.
What happened?
The three people who were were barred from flying out of NAIA last week because of fake OECs said they were recruited online. They said they had talked to their recruites over online direct messages and received the OECs through e-mail.
Each paid around P70,000 to cover recruitment fees and their flight tickets and an additional P7,000 to supposedly expedite the release of their certificates.
They were supposed to fly to Warsaw, Poland on an Air China flight before they were intercepted by the BI’s Travel Control and Enforcement Unit.
Another two females bound for Poland presented fake OECs in early May, which they said they paid a fixer P500 for. The two said they were also in contact with their recruiters via Facebook.
Another victims was supposed to leave for Dubai via an Emirates Airlines flight last Sunday. The BI said he claimed to be employed there as a personnel manager for a service provider and presented his documents, which did not reflect on the BI’s system.
He admitted to paying a recruiter P7,000 for a bogus OEC. Following the incident at the airport, BI staff referred him to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking for an investigation into the scammers who duped him.
Issues with Overseas Employment Certificates
In an interview on Philstar.com's 'Why Naman?' last Thursday, Joanna Concepcion — chairperson of migrant rights and welfare group Migrante International — said OFWs in Hong Kong and in the Asia Pacific region have been campaigning to have the OEC requirement scrapped altogether.
OFWs need to renew their OECs before each deployment and, Concepcion said, this will require payment of other mandatory fees like contributions to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., Pag-IBIG Fund, Social Security System and their membership to the Overseas Workers' Welfare Administration.
"For OFWs, it is an unecessary document. Why do you need a separate certificate when you can present your job order or job contract that was issued by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration?" Concepcion said in Filipino.
The government uses the OEC as a means to verify or serve as a “clearance” to ensure that the Filipino worker is documented and was recruited legally.
RELATED: Mandatory Pag-IBIG payments an additional burden for OFWs — groups