foreign employees in cases before the Labor Arbiter is based on speculations. Even if true, such inconvenience or difficulty is hardly irreparable injury. The trial court even ignored the public interest involved in suspending the enforcement of Rep. Act No. 8042 vis-à-vis the eleven licensed and registered recruitment agencies represented by the respondent. In People v. Gamboa,[50] we emphasized the primary aim of Rep. Act No. 8042: Preliminarily, the proliferation of illegal job recruiters and syndicates preying on innocent people anxious to obtain employment abroad is one of the primary considerations that led to the enactment of The Migrant Workers and Overseas Filipinos Act of 1995. Aimed at affording greater protection to overseas Filipino workers, it is a significant improvement on existing laws in the recruitment and placement of workers for overseas employment. Otherwise known as the Magna Carta of OFWs, it broadened the concept of illegal recruitment under the Labor Code and provided stiffer penalties thereto, especially those that constitute economic sabotage, i.e., Illegal Recruitment in Large Scale and Illegal Recruitment Committed by a Syndicate. [51] By issuing the writ of preliminary injunction against the petitioners sans any evidence, the trial court frustrated, albeit temporarily, the prosecution of illegal recruiters and allowed them to continue victimizing hapless and innocent people desiring to obtain employment abroad as overseas workers, and blocked the attainment of the salutary policies[52] embedded in Rep. Act No. 8042. It bears stressing that overseas workers, land-based and sea-based, had been remitting to the Philippines billions of dollars which over the years had propped the economy. In issuing the writ of preliminary injunction, the trial court considered paramount the interests of the eleven licensed and registered recruitment agencies represented by the respondent, and capriciously overturned the presumption of the constitutionality of the assailed provisions on the barefaced claim of the respondent that the assailed provisions of Rep. Act No. 8042 are unconstitutional. The trial court committed a grave abuse of its discretion amounting to excess or lack of jurisdiction in issuing the assailed order and writ of preliminary injunction. It is for this reason that the Court issued a temporary restraining order enjoining the enforcement of the writ of preliminary injunction issued by the trial court. IN LIGHT OF ALL THE FOREGOING, the petition is GRANTED. The assailed decision of the appellate court is REVERSED AND SET ASIDE. The Order of the Regional Trial Court dated August 21, 1995 in Civil Case No. Q-95-24401 and the Writ of Preliminary Injunction issued by it in the said case on August 24, 1995 are NULLIFIED. No costs. SO ORDERED. Quisumbing, (Acting Chairman), Austria-Martinez, and Tinga, JJ., concur. Puno, (Chairman), J., on official leave.

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