The Bureau of Immigration recently detained an overseas Filipino worker when records revealed that another individual had previously traveled under the same identity.

In a report given to Bureau of Immigration Commissioner Norman Tansingco, the Immigration Protection and Border Enforcement Section (I-Probes) said that a 33-year-old alias Olive attempted to depart the country for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as an OFW at Ninoy Aquino International Airport Terminal 1.

Despite being a first-time traveler, the BI primary inspection officers discovered that alias Olive previously had records of her departures as an OFW from 2015 and 2019.

A close examination of her documents shows that someone else had previously traveled with precisely the same identity facts.

Alias Olive said that when she was hired by an agent in Maguindanao in 2014, she had to fake her birth year to 1990 in order to meet the government's requirement of being employed as a home service worker abroad.

She also acknowledged paying PHP 1,500 for a new birth certificate, but she insisted that she was unable to proceed with her application and that she hasn't heard from her recruiter since then. She asserted that she was the legitimate owner of the details and name that had been used before.

This case was immediately forwarded to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, which will initiate an investigation into the incident.