20 Filipino girls rescued from traffickers

The girls, who all came from impoverished southern Philippine villages and had been lured by the promise of jobs abroad, were found after a raid on the house owned by the crime gang Saturday, police said.

The raid came after a member of the gang was arrested at Manila airport while trying to send off five other girls using fake passports to clients in the Middle East, said police Superintendent Alfred Corpus.

The girls told police that many of them had been locked up in the gang’s house for weeks on end while fake documents for them were prepared.

There are an estimated eight million Filipino workers overseas, many of them undocumented and travelled abroad using fake documents for a chance to earn as little as US$200 a month under sometimes dire circumstances.

Most the women who leave the country find themselves as domestic helpers in Hong Kong, Singapore or the Middle East, rights groups say.

They are often abused, and often end up seeking protection from Philippine embassies.

The government has launched a campaign against human traffickers preying on minors, although it has acknowledged that the millions in remittances sent back by its army of overseas-based workers has been keeping the economy afloat.

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