The Department of Justice on Wednesday disclosed that Justice Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla is set to meet with China’s ambassador today to discuss the illegal offshore gaming operators in the country.
According to DoJ spokesperson Atty. Mico Clavano, the DoJ chief and Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Huang Xilian are set to talk about cancelled Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators listed by the Philippine Gaming Corporation that violated the law of the land.
“He will meet with the Chinese Ambassador tomorrow afternoon to speak about the cancelled POGO companies as listed by PAGCOR,” Clavano said.
“There must be a coordinated effort between the two countries to bring them back to China given that they have no more basis to stay here in the Philippines,” he added.
The Justice spokesperson added that while the Chinese ambassador is in China, Remulla is constantly communicating with the envoy for the meeting which will be the first face-to-face meeting concerning the issue on repatriating POGO workers back to China.
Clavano disclosed that there are 175 canceled POGO companies with varying number of employees each and they expect around 40,000 total Chinese nationals to be brought back to China.
In a related development, Remulla stated that illegal POGO workers will be deported if authorities catch them.
“We are coordinating closely with our Chinese counterpart on this matter so they won’t say something against us on this issue,” Remulla said.
At present, Remulla said there are 280 illegal POGO workers that are to be deported who were earlier arrested by the police and he stressed that they will be maximizing their resources to address the issue of these illegal POGO workers that include those who are hiding in the country to evade their cases in China.
On the issue of deporting all POGO workers in the country, Remulla said they have to evaluate everything to determine the real situation.
“We are just upholding the law here, thus we have to evaluate everything and consider its effect. We will balance the situation and coordinate with other government agencies on this matter,” Remulla said.
Those who will be arrested in the government’s campaign against illegal workers will be deported immediately, according to Remulla.