one of the top destinations for OFWs including domestic workers. Meanwhile in Singapore the Humanitarian Organtzation for Migration Economics (HOME) and Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), NGOs providing services and shelter to migrant workers, estimate that some 607o of migrants in distress who seek refuge are Filipina domestic helpers. The complaints range from maltreatment and sexual abuse to nonpayment of wages. In Oman, for instance, there are recent reports that the owner of Gulf Shield Manpower Services keeps seven Filipina women locked up in their room and only lets them out during the day to do odd jobs in various places. Human trafficking trade is also an underreported but apparently worsening problem in the region with flows being from the poorer countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia to the richer countries. (See Box: Filipina migrant worker trafficked to sex work in Malaysia) In Asia as a whole Japan is the main destination for trafficked women especially from the Philippines, with estimates of Filipinas trafficked into prostitution there reaching as high as 150,000, and Thailand. An estimated 300,000 women and children are estimated to be currently involved in the sex trade in Southeast Asia. Reports are also accumulating of trafficking of women, undocumented and refugees, along the Mekong border. Spdicates are in full swing in these operations including the notorious Yakuza which purportedly controls brothels all across Japan. Box 4: Filipina migrant worker trafficked to sex work in Malaysia Jona Merlow is a young 22 year old woman from Davao City, the middle child of three siblings, and a high school graduate. Her father works as a utility worker in a gas company with a take home pay ofjust P3,000 a month while her mother is busy with housework and has no other gainful emplo5rment. Jona and two other girls were approached by an unlicensed recruiter and, on the strength of an 'audition'via cellphone, offered a monthly salary of P60,000-70,000 to sing in bands in Malaysia. Jona was eager to help her family escape poverty and readily agreed. In October 2006, they all started singing at the Bunny Club in Kuching, Sarawak where they worked from 7pm to 2am every day. They were not receiving anlhing however because their supposed salaries were going to paying for the travel expenses from Davao City to Kuching, 'chopping' fees of their passports, and to water and electricity bills that they were promised would be free. They asked to change to higher-paying jobs to pay offtheir debts and were transferred to work as "guest relations officers" in Kalampai, for which they didn't have the work permits. In the beginning they were told that they wouldn't be forced to be with any men and have sex but later started to be scolded for not doing so. Eventually they forced themselves to do so if only to be able to pay offtheir debts. They were moreover always under stress from periodic "checks" and raids by the Malaysian police. JJ