NBI Region IV-B director Atty. Renato Garbo III (right) with former Director and now Department of Agrarian Reform Adjudication head Atty. Virgilio Mendez (right) and one of his staff Noel Lontoc (left). (Photo supplied)
By Tracy Cabrera
CAPITOL HILL, Washington DC — In 2024, the Philippines retained its Tier 1 status in that year’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report recently released by the US State Department.
Tier 1 ranking is the highest rating given to countries that satisfy the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons under the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000.
The Philippines has been on Tier 1 status since 2016.
This is thanks to the Philippine government’s intensified campaign to eliminate human trafficking as a social scourge that inhibits societal and national development.
At the forefront of the campaign is the National Bureau of Investigation that has seriously taken steps to weed out perpetrators of this centuries old concern deeply rooted in abuse and exploitation of the poor by the rich and influential.
Just recently and after intense sleuthing and rigid surveillance, NBI agents received a report of an alleged cybersex den in a barangay in Calapan City in the province of Oriental Mindoro, which identified a certain Leonila Rosales Lontoc as the mastermind behind the hiring of young women sold as prostitutes in Bongabong Town, also in Oriental Mindoro.
According to NBI Region IV-B (Mindoro Occidental and Oriental, Marinduque, Romblon and Palawan) director Atty. Renato Garbo III, an intelligence team led by special investigator (SI) Jose Lito Bangit verified the report but the surveillance operation ended negative. Garbo’s team, however, did not lose hope and after painstaking work was able to contact one of Lontoc’s alleged cohort and recruiter, Angelo Mortel.
On confirming Mortel’s human trafficking activities, Garbo immediately organized an entrapment operation with Bangit posing as a customer at the KW & E Hotel in Barangay Sagana in Bongabong.
On receiving marked money from Bangit, Mortel was quickly nabbed. Three women, two of them minors, were rescued from the clutches of the human trafficking ring. By
The 2024 TIP Report cites the Philippine government’s continued demonstration of serious and sustained efforts in combatting trafficking in persons.
These efforts include investigation and Prosecution of more alleged traffickers, finalizing and adopting Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking (IACAT) SOPs on the identification and monitoring of trafficking-related corruption cases, promulgating implementing rules and regulations for its amended anti-trafficking law and sentencing nearly all traffickers to significant prison terms.
Ambassador Jose Manuel G. Romualdez thanked the US State Department for acknowledging the efforts of the Philippine government under President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. to fight human trafficking.
“It has always been the priority of the Marcos administration to protect Filipino workers and other vulnerable members of the society from human traffickers, illegal recruiters, and crime syndicates. With the whole-of-government approach, we will further intensify our campaign to stop trafficking in persons by bringing the perpetrators to justice and identifying and assisting victims as recommended in the Report,” Romualdez stressed.
