ILOILO City-The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) Field Office VI has released a total of P109,000 for victims of human trafficking.

The amount was given to a total of 16 victims, seven of them were victims of prostitution and two displaced Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs), while the rest were victims of cyber pornography, forced labor, slavery and illegal recruitment.

If broken down by location, five came from Iloilo City; three each from Bacolod City, Iloilo Province and Negros Occidental; and two from Bulacan and Caloocan City.

DSWD is mandated to provide social protection to trafficked persons, thus the implementation of the Recovery and Re-integration program for Trafficked Persons. This was implemented to scale up the programs and services and deliver better interventions to trafficked persons at various levels.

Trafficking in persons refers to the recruitment, obtaining, hiring, providing, offering, transportation, transfer, maintaining, harbouring or receipt of persons with or without the victims consent or knowledge, within or across national borders. Means employed involves threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, abduction, fraud, deception, abuse of power or of position, taking advantage of the vulnerability of the person or the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person.

Services offered by the agency include psychosocial, medical and legal and economic services that will enable the clients to recover from the traumatic experience, achieve economic independence and a strong sense of self-worth./dswd6/May Rago-Castillo