Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Bangsamoro Autonomy Act No. 9
In forceAn Act Regulating the Operations of Local and Foreign Recruitment Agencies Within the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM)
An agency must hold a MOLE Certificate of Accreditation, renewed every 3 years, keep an office in the BARMM, hold ₱5 million in paid-up capital, and give preference to Bangsamoro residents in hiring. MOLE inspects, publishes the list of accredited agencies, and can suspend or cancel accreditation.
Filed
First Reading
Second Reading — Committee
Second Reading — Plenary
Third Reading
Approved
EnactedNow
Signed into law and operative unless later amended or repealed.
What this measure does
This makes recruitment a licensed trade in the Bangsamoro. Any local or foreign agency operating in the region — main office, branch or sub-office — must register with the Ministry of Labor and Employment and hold a Certificate of Accreditation, renewed every 3 years, signed and sealed by the Ministry. It must also keep an actual office inside the region.
The reach is wider than the region's borders. Section 4(B) catches any agency, anywhere, that recruits or employs someone who lives in the BARMM. The rule follows the worker.
To be accredited an agency needs ₱5 million in paid-up capital and at least 75% Filipino ownership, and it must give preference to Bangsamoro residents when it recruits, places and hires. MOLE inspects, and publishes the list of who is accredited so a worker can check.
Operating without accreditation is unlawful and carries a fine of ₱150,000 to ₱200,000 — the same range as forging a certificate, which can additionally be prosecuted as a crime. MOLE can suspend or cancel an accreditation outright, giving the agency 15 days to argue against it.
Why it was proposed
Illegal recruitment and trafficking. The policy section names both, along with the general welfare of Bangsamoro migrant workers — a region that exports a great deal of labour and whose workers had no regional register to check a recruiter against.
Who it affects
- Anyone in the region taking work through an agency, locally or overseas.
- Bangsamoro residents recruited by agencies based elsewhere, who are covered wherever the agency sits.
- Every local and foreign recruitment and employment agency touching the region, down to sub-offices.
- Travel agencies, airline sales agencies and OFW insurers, disqualified from holding accreditation at all.
- Staff of the national labour, immigration and aviation agencies — and their relatives to the fourth degree — who are likewise disqualified.
Who would implement it
- Bangsamoro Ministry of Labor and Employment (MOLE), which accredits, issues guidelines and the fee schedule, inspects, publishes the list, and suspends or cancels accreditation
Funding
No appropriation. The act appropriates nothing; it is funded by the application and renewal fees MOLE is directed to set. Its figures are regulatory rather than budgetary — ₱5,000,000 minimum paid-up capital, fines of ₱150,000 to ₱200,000.
What changes if it becomes law
- Recruitment in the region moves from unregulated to licensed, with a three-yearly renewal.
- There is a public list of legal recruiters a worker can check before paying anyone.
- Agencies must be physically present in the region rather than reachable only from Manila or abroad.
- Conflicts of interest are closed off by name — travel agencies, OFW insurers, and labour-agency staff and their families.
- Bangsamoro residents gain a stated hiring preference.
- Operating unaccredited becomes a finable offence with an administrative cancellation route behind it.
Raised during deliberations
No published record of the debate on this measure. Parliament’s journals cover sittings up to March 2023 only, and no committee report on it has been published.
What to notice
The disqualification list is the most interesting drafting in the act, because it is written from experience rather than from theory. Travel agencies and airline sales agents are barred — the classic vehicle for charging a worker for a ticket that is really a placement fee. So are insurers writing the compulsory OFW coverage, closing the loop where the agency and the insurer are the same interest. And so is any official of DOLE, POEA, OWWA, the Bureau of Immigration, the NBI, the PNP or the airport authorities — together with their relatives to the fourth civil degree, which in practice means first cousins. That last clause is a direct strike at regulatory capture, and it is unusually blunt.
The ₱5 million capital requirement cuts the other way. It is a serious barrier, and its effect on a small local recruiter is not to make them compliant but to make them informal — which is the population the act is least able to see and the worker is most likely to meet.
What is missing is the worker. The agency gets an express right to be heard: 15 days to answer a notice of cancellation, in writing. There is no matching provision for someone already defrauded — no compensation, no bond, no rule on what happens to workers mid-deployment when an accreditation is pulled. The act regulates the recruiter carefully and leaves the recruited to the national system behind it.