Rising number of trafficked fishermen alarms Tawi-Tawi authorities
By: Jake Soriano, VERA Files, InterAksyon.com
April 20, 2014

BONGAO, Tawi-Tawi—Tawi-Tawi authorities are alarmed at the growing number of fishermen from the Visayas who end up here after being recruited by human trafficking syndicates to engage in dangerous compressor diving.

The latest case involves 13 fishermen rescued from a fishing village here on March 15 by a team composed of the Tawi-Tawi Provincial Police Office (PPO), Philippine Marines and the Bongao Inter-agency Task Force Against Trafficking in Persons (BIATFAT).

The case is the eighth recorded by BIATFAT since December 2012, and brings the total number of rescued fishermen to 80, all of them from Cebu and Bohol.

“They have taken a huge risk in accepting compressor diving work here,” said Inspector Elmira Relox, chief of the Tawi-Tawi PPO Women and Children Protection Desk, who led the rescue.

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