Online campaign vs illegal recruitment launched

The fight against illegal recruitment has reached the web.

The world’s largest labor union federation has launched a web platform to protect migrant workers from the Philippines and other countries from unscrupulous recruitment agencies, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reported yesterday.

ILO said the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) has developed the Recruitment Advisor platform which listed thousands of agencies in the Philippines, Nepal and Indonesia.

The governments provided the list of licensed agencies while network of trade unions and civil society organizations submitted their own information.

According to the ILO, the platform allows workers to comment on their experiences, rate the recruitment agencies and learn about their rights.

The platform is initially available in English, Indonesian, Nepali and Tagalog, but it will be further developed in more languages.

“It’s time to put power back into workers’ hands to rate the recruitment agencies and show whether their promises of jobs and wages are delivered,” ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow said.

Burrow noted that unscrupulous agencies take advantage of migrant workers due to lack of enforcement by governments or simply because the workers are not aware of their rights.

The ITUC official said many workers are not aware that they should not pay recruitment fees to get a job.

“This platform can help migrant workers make critical choices at the time of planning their journey to work in a foreign country. We know that when a worker is recruited fairly, the risk of ending in forced labour is drastically reduced,” ILO technical specialist Alix Nasri said.

“We strongly encourage workers to share their experiences so others can learn from them. A critical mass of reviews is needed for the platform to be really helpful for migrants,” Nasri added.

ILO hopes that the platform will promote recruiters who follow a fair recruitment process and provide useful feedback to governments regarding the practices of licensed recruitment agencies, which could be used to complement more traditional monitoring systems.

Meanwhile, the Department of Labor and Employment reported that about 18,000 migrant workers have applied to secure the government-issued identification cards for OFWs.

Labor Undersecretary Dominador Say said the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) has agreed to allocate P50 million for the printing of the OFW ID, which will be given to Filipinos working abroad for free.