They should be in school.
Instead, they left their homes to work overseas only to endure beatings and missed meals in strangers’ homes.
Passed on as 24-year-olds by "escorts" when they left Manila between last year and this January, six teenaged girls who worked as househelp in Jordan shared their stories on Monday after coming home from months of staying in a cramped Filipino shelter.
As similar as their reasons for leaving, the girls, aged 13 to 17 when they left the country, suffered similar experiences.
"They would slap me, hit me on the head, kick me," said one of the six, who were repatriated on Sunday and Monday afternoon.
"Sometimes they would deny me food," said the 13-year-old, the eldest in a brood of four who decided to find a job abroad to help her jobless parents raise their family.
All unknowing victims of human trafficking through the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, the teenagers returned home with two other female overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) through what Senate President Manuel Villar called his long-time "personal crusade" to help distressed migrant workers fleeing abusive employers.
One of the repatriated workers, 29-year-old Jeanelyn Martinez of Bacolod City, brought along her Jordan-born two-year-old son.
"I have long been seeing cases like these in my travels, though I have been doing it privately. But I decided to let the public know so that our government will see the situation. They're too young, how come they were able to pass through the airport? They were illegally recruited and there are many cases like this," Villar told reporters at the airport Monday afternoon.
"And this happens not just in Jordan but in all countries where many Filipinos are employed. If you put them all together, there will be thousands of these cases," said the senator, who encountered the teenagers on a recent visit to Jordan.
The six minors, all Mindanao natives, said they were recruited by an agency that offered them work as domestic helpers in Jordan.
"I applied [with] the agency so that I could help my parents," said the youngest of the group, who left her native Datu Montawal, Maguindanao in January.
The system seemed attractive: One was asked to pay P1,500 as placement fee, while another said she was told to repay her fare and processing expenses to the agency by surrendering three months’ salary.
The girls appeared to have received all the help they could get just to leave the country without hitches. While they clearly looked underage, they got through immigration with a tourist visa and a passport that put their age at 24.
"There was a cop who assisted me at the airport. He told me to tell the immigration officer that I am going to visit a relative there," said an 18-year-old Cotabato City native who left the country when she was a year younger.
"I was told to say I am going to visit an aunt in Jordan," another teenager said.
But they had barely settled to the burdensome chores in their assigned homes when the beatings began.
"That's why I decided to run away," said one of the teens.
They all ended up in an OFW shelter at the Philippine embassy in Jordan, crammed for months with some 200 other migrant workers counting on government to bring them home.
On top of funding their plane fare, Villar promised to further help the group go back to their provinces.
"People should know about this so it will stop. In the Senate, there are only two things we can do: investigate and recommend prosecution for those at fault and create a new system [to address illegal recruitment], although under our system that's already disallowed and the implementation is the one that is not being done," Villar said.
He was, however, reluctant to talk further about launching another Senate inquiry, what with the chamber's hands full with investigating controversies like the scandal-tainted national broadband network deal.
"We should investigate, but government officials are usually not allowed to appear so maybe in this case they will do the same," he said.
He called on government agencies concerned with OFWs -- the labor department, the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration -- to improve their system in repatriating abused OFWs and curbing the incidence of illegal recruitment.
The senator also proposed a "realignment of budget in the executive branch for repatriation," noting the OWWA had to little funds for this purpose.
To government, one of the minors said: "I hope you can help the others whom we left there in Jordan. There are still many like us."
The foxNews
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Topic: Teen Filipino girls tell of being trafficked, beaten up in Jordan (Read 1205 times)