COTABATO CITY (June 28, 2025) — Employees of the Bangsamoro social services ministry had rescued in Tawi-Tawi 25 human trafficking victims in two operations and immediately facilitated their return to their hometowns in Bohol.
Local executives in Tawi-Tawi and officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region confirmed to reporters on Saturday, June 28, that the rescued individuals, many of them from Talibon, Bohol were intercepted early this week by personnel of the Ministry of Social Services and Development-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in one of the island towns in Tawi-Tawi, which near Malaysia.
MSSD-BARMM personnel, policemen and local officials rescued in nearby Sulu province the week before seven other human trafficking victims, also bound for Malaysia.
The 25 human trafficking victims rescued in separate operations in a municipality near Tawi-Tawi’s capital town, Bongao, were immediately provided with food and other provisions by employees of the MSSD-BARMM, according to officials of the ministry in the Bangsamoro regional capitol in Cotabato City.
BARMM’s social services minister, the lawyer Raissa Jajurie, said on Saturday that officials of the Department of Social Welfare in Region 7 helped them work out the return of the rescued jobseekers to Bohol.
Jadurie said units of PRO-BAR in Tawi-Tawi and members of the Philippine Marines securing strategic areas in the province under the supervision of Army Lt. Gen. Antonio Nafarrete, chief of the Western Mindanao Command, were instrumental in the rescue of the human trafficking victims.
PRO-BAR’s director, Police Brig. Gen. Jaysen Carpio De Guzman, said he has directed his subordinate-officers in the Tawi-Tawi Provincial Police Office to enlist the support of local executives in identifying the people who had promised the rescued human trafficking victims with employment in Malaysia in exchange for money. (JFU, Cotabato City)
