Filipinos bound for UAE offloaded at Manila airport

A well-placed source confirmed that this has been happening since Thursday, and that complainants are ready to execute an affidavit to document the cases of extortion by a certain individual at the NAIA.

“The news has spread among the community, the airlines and the travel agents. Some of those offloaded do not want to make any statements at this time,” the source told Khaleej Times.

The complainants who were forced to pay thousands of pesos to the individual involved prefer to relate their experiences upon their arrival in the UAE, he added.

When contacted, Edgardo Mendoza, chief of the Immigration Regulation Division at the Bureau of Immigration in Manila, said: “I've been told that it (confiscation of documents) has occurred but (none of ) our Bureau of Immigration personnel is involved in it. I've also been told that a certain Edgardo Castro is confiscating the passports, air tickets and visas.”

He added that the confiscation may have been undertaken by the Anti-Illegal Recruitment Task Force of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) in Manila. He advised that one could contact retired Manila police colonel Reynaldo Jaylo, who heads the task force, for a comment. The latter was not immediately available for a phone interview yesterday.

Khaleej Times had earlier received a complaint from a friend of Omar Matucad, one of the Thai Airways passengers who had been offloaded at the NAIA on January 8. Matucad was scheduled to travel to Dubai on a visit visa sponsored by a travel agency.

“Omar has been working in the UAE for a long time. When he resigned from his job and was about to transfer to a new employer, he was given a six-month ban. His passport, visit visa and ticket were confiscated. He was told that the sponsor had been blacklisted,” she said.

Grace Garido, tourism executive, Al Wasl Travels LLC, told Khaleej Times, that at least five of the passengers sponsored by it had been offloaded since Thursday. “We had been told that the passengers of other travel agencies were likewise affected by this. We are just wondering why some passengers on visit visas arrived last night from Manila via Thai Airways. They were not even interrogated,” she said.

On coming to know that the passengers did not arrive in Dubai, Garido contacted Assistant Labour Attache Ching Ardivilla to check whether the Al Wasl Travels LLC had been blacklisted. “There hadn't been any reports that we had been blacklisted in the Philippines. Why is it that our passengers had to be offloaded in the first place?” she queried.