(Eagle News) — The Bureau of Immigration on Thursday, March 22, intercepted two Filipinos who were bound for the United Arab Emirates using fake employment contracts.
In a statement, the bureau said the two had attempted to board an Emirates Airlines flight to Dubai when they were stopped by immigration officers who noted discrepancies in their documents.
The officers referred them to the Travel Control and Enforcement Unit for inspection.
The TCEU officers then showed the documents to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) Labor Assistance Center officer on duty at the airport terminal, who concluded, after a series of checks, that the contracts had not been verified by the Philippine Overseas Labor Office (POLO) in Dubai, and had been faked.
When asked, the Filipinos admitted that they received their employment contracts from a person they met online a day before their flight.
“They were instructed by this fixer to delete all conversations from their phones pertaining to their travel. It was obviously a ploy to depart through illegal means,” Immigration chief Jaime Morente said.
Morente said that similar schemes are used when Filipinos are illegally deployed to a third country, such as war-torn Syria.
“This modus operandi is a reemerging one, wherein the fixer falsifies employment contracts in the UAE, attaches it to an approved OEC, and submits it for primary inspection. We are able to intercept attempts when we see discrepancies in their records,” he added.
(Eagle News Service)
