Justice Secretary Leila de Lima said she has set a meeting with owners and operators of hotels and resorts  next month to inform them of this new policy laid down by the Interagency Council Against Trafficking (Iacat), and to stop  even minors who are accompanied by their relatives to enter the rooms of foreign guests.

“Especially the resorts, and those small hotels and inns because, in many cases, pedophiles use small hotels  to cover their acts due to less strict rules,” she said.

Asked if hotel owners would refuse to heed the policy, de Lima warned  “there are several ways to compel them to follow because we can always use the full resources of government to prevent the abuse of our women and children.”

De Lima also said the Iacat would also dispatch their personnel and agents to train hotel and resort personnel to spot probable cases of pedophilia and commission of trafficking in persons within their premises.

Vanessa J. Tobin, country representative of the United Nations Children Fund said training have been going on only recently, and she said she hoped that more hotel and resort staff and personnel would be trained.

The new policy was issued after the Iacat members scored a spike in arrests and prevention of Filipino women and children from being trafficked.

From August last year to May this year, government agents stopped 57,000 Filipino women and children from traveling with questionable travel papers and documents. Last week about 80 women and children were forced to disembark from a plane leaving the Zamboanga airport.

And during the same period covering only nine months, Philippine courts convicted 28 persons involved in 23 cases,  an almost 100 percent the conviction rate during the five-year period 2005-10.

She said the enforcement of antihuman trafficking also led to the arrests and filing of cases against government personnel, including those from the Bureau of Immigration.

These include the arrest and filing of charges in July last year against 20 immigration personnel assigned at the Diosdado Macapagal Airport, dismissal of 39 immigration personnel at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in August, and the filing of charges by Philippine Overseas Employment Administration against their superiors for alleged involvement human trafficking.

Government agents also arrested an agent of the National Bureau of Investigation for engaging in escort services who solicit P20,000 fee per person.