ILLEGAL RECRUITMENT: Charges readied vs Isabela dad, wife

JONES, Isabela – Marie (not her real name) was looking forward to returning home with savings in Malaysia to give her family a bright future.

Instead she returned to this logging town empty-handed, and worse, with mounting debts for the P30,000 she had raised as placement fee for a supposed good-paying job in the eastern Malaysian state of Sarawak.

Nardo (not his real name), a farmer here, even had to sell his farm for his P120,000 placement fee. But instead of the jobs promised them, he, Marie and 17 other local folk found themselves doing menial chores in Malaysia, some of them reportedly even being forced into prostitution and hard labor.

Last week, after several months of mental and physical turmoil in Malaysia, they returned to the country after getting help from the Philippine Embassy and the Malay­sian police.

With the gypped jobseekers back home, local authorities led by Mayor Florante Raspado are readying charges of large-scale illegal recruitment and estafa against their alleged recruiters – a municipal councilor and his wife, a barangay councilwoman.

The identities of the councilor and his wife have been withheld pending the formal filing of cases against them before the prosecutor’s office next week. 

The victims alleged that the couple promised them five-figure salaries in Malaysia but what they got was the equivalent of P5,000 per month.

Instead of the promised jobs as caregivers, hotel receptionists and factory workers, they said they ended up in massage parlors and sweatshops.