J’cans urged to be more alert to stop human trafficking
Published:Saturday | November 13, 2021 | 12:10 AM
Opposition Senator Donna Scott Mottley yesterday made an impassioned plea for Jamaicans to report human trafficking, a scourge she said that too many in Jamaica have turned a blind eye to.
The International Labour Organization has reported that 25 million people around the world are trapped in human trafficking, an illegal enterprise with an estimated value of US$150 billion.
Her remarks came as the Upper House yesterday passed the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Suppression and Punishment) Act that imposes mandatory prison sentences on persons convicted of the crime as well as increased fines.
“When we see it before our eyes, when we see it taking place, don’t turn a blind eye, try and do something, make a report, make a call, say something to the police,” she said.
Scott Mottley urged the Government to send out social workers in communities where there were suspected cases of human trafficking.
“I was told the other day that there is actually a community where it is almost standard that the men take the young girls in. Almost standard. Nobody thinks it is a problem. How can we show Jamaica that it is a problem?” she questioned.
“How can we show them that when persons are lured with an offer of employment, and end up as a ‘go-go’ dancer, that something is wrong with that? The men need to boycott the strip clubs,” Scott Mottley said.
Unspeakable violations
Piloting the legislation, Matthew Samuda, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of National Security, said that the global share of detected child trafficking has tripled over the last 15 years.
“These victims are subjected to unspeakable violations and harm,” Samuda said, adding that 50 per cent of detected victims were trafficked for sexual exploitation while 38 per cent were exploited for forced labour.
He said that the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an overall worsening of the incidence of human trafficking.
According to Samuda, “the share of children among detected trafficking victims has tripled while the share of boys has increased five times in the past 15 years”.
In his contribution to the debate, government Senator Kavan Gayle noted that local observers believe that trafficking-in-persons schemes have become more clandestine as a result of the pandemic.
He said that human traffickers have increasingly used social media platforms, making false job offers to woo their victims.
Gayle acknowledged that the inner-city communities were more vulnerable to human trafficking and forced labour.
“Those poor and poverty-stricken families, they are the ones that are increasingly exposed because in some of these instances, these areas are controlled by dons that exploit the situation,” he said.
The government senator added that occasionally, reports surface on social media about young girls who went missing and subsequent to that, further reports indicate that they were found or have returned home.
“In an attempt to get to the root of these issues, any time there is a report that there is a young lady that is missing and has been found or either returned, there must be an investigation into it,” he said.