An anatomy of a massive illegal recruitment

The case of 137 Filipino drivers in Dubai

June 15, 2009, MANILA, Philippines—It all started last November with an ordinary flier which said: “4,000+ jobs for bus drivers in Dubai.” The paper ad offered a monthly salary of 5,200 dirhams or roughly P67,000. Thousands of these fliers were distributed by a local recruitment agency known as CYM International Services and Placement Agency at different bus terminals all over the country.

And so they came, bus drivers working for a well-known transport company, men who belong to other occupations but knew how to drive, former migrant workers who have worked in the Middle East before, and even a gym instructor. They left their jobs to grab what they thought was an opportunity of a lifetime.

CYM International, licensed with the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA), assured the driver-applicants that after a month’s training in Dubai, they would immediately report to work at the government’s Road and Transport Authority (RTA) as bus drivers.

Lure of the lending firms

CYM charged each applicant a placement fee of P150,300, a violation of existing POEA rules that mandate a fee not beyond the equivalent of the worker’s one month’s salary.

From January to March 2009, about 137 workers were sent by CYM International to Dubai in three batches. Around 40 were left in Manila though they already contracted a loan from the lending company for which they have been harassed. Today, of the 137 drivers, 68 continue to languish in Ajman where they were brought to live in a tenement building right beside a garbage dump. The lucky ones were able to leave Dubai before their tourist visas expired, either to work in Qatar with the help of the Department of Labor and Employment or to return home, then go back to Dubai as legitimate, documented workers.

The Blas F. Ople Policy Center has been helping these drivers in their legal battles since April of this year. In our five years as a non-government organization helping distressed overseas Filipino workers, this is the first case of illegal recruitment and human trafficking that we have ever encountered of this magnitude and with such an elaborate system of deceit and connivance.

Nearly all of the applicants accepted by CYM who couldn’t afford the placement fee were referred to a lending company known as RJJ Lacaba Financing Corporation. A certain Elmer Lim, together with a loan officer of RJJ Lacaba, facilitated the transaction. In two days, checking accounts were opened, cash cards were processed, and documents an inch-thick, as well as more than 20 checks, were signed by the drivers.

Too many checks

According to the drivers, they were neither given time to bring home the documents to read nor furnished copies of whatever it was that they signed. Cabo, one of the drivers, said he and his companions went to Lacaba’s office in the morning and were still signing checks and documents well into the night. Tired, they begged off and asked to just return the following day.

The financing company obviously had some pull with certain banks. Its staff was able to withdraw from the cash cards of the drivers without their knowledge or permission.

When RJJ Lacaba Financing Corporation distributed cash cards from a certain bank to the drivers, the attached receipts showed that several withdrawals had already been made, leaving a balance below a hundred pesos. How could this happen, when their PIN numbers were supposed to be confidential and known only to the owners of these cards?

During a hearing of the Senate Labor Committee chaired by Senator Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, a bus driver confessed that it was his first time to open a checking account. He simply followed all the instructions of the RJJ Lacaba loan officer. The postdated checks that he signed were all undated, he said. The loan officer asked him to sign several undated checks with two other co-makers.

Later on, the drivers’ pro-bono lawyer Reynaldo Robles, summing up all the checks issued by each of his clients, said he was surprised to learn that each driver-client of RJJ Lacaba owes an aggregate amount of P1.9 million as a result of checks supposedly issued not just to Lacaba but to two insurance companies as well.

Three checks made out to an insurance company by each of the drivers amounted to P345,000. On the day that they signed the checks, the drivers felt rushed into completing all documents and requirements, and their requests for copies of what they signed were denied.

‘Reprocessed’ job orders

As the checks started to fall due and demand letters were sent to their homes, the drivers, some of whom have since returned home, were shocked by the sheer weight of their financial obligations though none of them were ever hired as bus drivers in Dubai as promised by the agency.

CYM International Services and Placement Agency was listed by the POEA as an agency in good standing when the recruitment of drivers was going on. But CYM, which is managed by Connie Paloma, did not have a job order for 4,000 bus drivers to be hired by Dubai’s RTA, as its fliers claimed. It could not have such job orders because the global financial crisis had hit Dubai hard and as a result, RTA had a freeze-hiring policy in place. From the very start, the entire recruitment process was built on sand.

Still, CYM and its Dubai-based agency, Al Toomoh Technical Services Inc. went ahead with its hiring process, enlisting 11 other licensed agencies to “process” the papers of the drivers using different principals or employers in Dubai. This is why the drivers were given employment contracts on the day of their departure. These contracts stated that the 137 workers would be working in Dubai as merchandisers, sales executives, utility helpers, and other positions but not as RTA bus drivers.

All 12 licensed agencies are now under preventive suspension by the POEA.

Based on documents shared by the drivers with the Ople Center, only four workers were actually processed by CYM. The rest of the 133 workers were fanned out to different licensed agencies using job orders that were “reprocessed” or “repro”—a common practice among recruiters.

For a “repro,” an agency can lend the balance of its job orders to another agency for a fee. One agency owner admitted to a staff of the Ople Center that it received P7,500 per head as processing fee from CYM’s Connie Paloma.

“Reprocessing” enables the lead agency to shortcut the process and shepherd its applicants through the POEA without their papers being questioned because the job orders seem in order, at least on paper. Workers leaving under “repro” arrangements become instantly vulnerable to harassment and abuse by their employers and agents abroad because of the disparity in their work and visa documents.

Desperate housewives

The housewives of 68 remaining workers in Dubai have become desperate and continued to borrow money from friends and relatives for remittance to their husbands stranded in Ajman Camp—a pitiful and ironic reversal of roles.

What makes the situation extremely urgent is that out of the remaining 68 drivers, 18 have concrete job offers, this time legitimate, with Emirates Airline Catering. The 18 workers fear that a prolonged delay in the payment of fines could lead to another missed opportunity to earn in Dubai. Only one thing stands in the way of employment—immigration penalties amounting to a rough equivalent of more than P6 million, with daily fines tacked on as weeks pass.

Equally sad is the failure of the children of these housewives to enroll. “It’s so painful but we couldn’t do anything. Some people are even running after us,” one of the housewives said.

Despite their woes, the desperate housewives have found strength in each other, often calling each other up or sending text messages to give updates about pending cases or meeting up at the Ople Center in Pasay City to wait for news.

On Tuesday, Labor Secretary Marianito Roque informed the Blas Ople Center that the immigration penalties of the 68 remaining drivers in Ajman would soon be resolved as an outcome of his talks with Emirates officials last Sunday. The secretary had flown to Dubai for one day just to resolve the matter.

The drivers welcomed this good news with enormous relief and gratitude. Life particularly in Ajman Camp has become even more horrendous as only a single room in the entire building has a working air-condition unit. Because of the intense summer heat in Dubai, the drivers are also in dire need of drinking water, and are reliant at the Office of the Labor Attache for weekly deliveries of water as well as food and diesel to power the building’s electric generator.

‘Repro’ not tolerated

Secretary Roque has also ordered a crackdown on licensed recruitment agencies engaged in the reprocessing of job orders and other forms of illegal recruitment. The POEA decision to cancel the licenses of 12 agencies involved in this scam will undoubtedly send a strong signal to the industry that “repro” will no longer be tolerated.

CYM International Services and Placement Agency has been temporarily closed down. We are now awaiting the decision of the POEA on the administrative complaint for the cancellation of licenses for all 12 conspiring agencies. The drivers also filed a criminal case which is now pending at the Department of Justice.

On June 19, a second hearing will be held at the executive judge’s sala of RTC Manila on our petition for the complainants to be declared as pauper-litigants. Once this petition is approved, the case can be raffled off and hearings on the drivers’ class suit to nullify the financial transactions connected to this illegal recruitment scam shall begin.

Connie Paloma, the CYM’s operations manager who recruited all 137 bus drivers, remains at large and has been spotted one time in Dubai. The request of the Senate to the Department of Foreign Affairs for the cancellation of her passport has been submitted by the Office of the Undersecretary for Migrant Workers’ Affairs to their legal department for further study. - Susan Ople, Philippine Daily Inquirer