Yvonne Ba­boolal

There will be a vig­or­ous en­force­ment of hu­man traf­fick­ing leg­is­la­tion to en­sure that per­pe­tra­tors are con­vict­ed and fined, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan said in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day."We have to deal se­vere­ly with peo­ple do­ing hu­man traf­fick­ing. They should be dealt with in court," Ram­bachan added.Mak­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on the Hu­man Traf­fick­ing Bill, Ram­bachan said the prob­lem was prob­a­bly more per­va­sive in T&T than was be­lieved."Hu­man traf­fick­ing is more in­sid­i­ous than overt," he not­ed.

He said in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man traf­fick­ing re­ports had iden­ti­fied T&T as a des­ti­na­tion, source and tran­sit coun­try for the traf­fick­ing of women, chil­dren and men.Women were used as pros­ti­tutes in broth­els and chil­dren and men were used in forced labour, he said.He said raids were of­ten heard of at broth­els in cen­tral Trinidad and re­called that in 2007 fraud­u­lent pass­ports, with no Im­mi­gra­tion stamps, were seized in one such raid.Ram­bachan said sev­er­al Asians were seen set­ting up busi­ness­es in T&T and the ques­tion need­ed to be asked whether some were work­ing un­der forced con­di­tions."We have to ask if they have their pa­pers," he added.

He said there al­so were al­so re­ports of peo­ple who were brought from Guyana to work in homes in T&T and their pass­ports were tak­en away by their em­ploy­ers.Ram­bachan said it al­so was re­port­ed that peo­ple were smug­gled in­to T&T through Moru­ga, Cou­va and Ce­dros.Se­cu­ri­ty firms that hire a large num­ber of for­eign­ers need­ed to be checked, he sug­gest­ed.Quot­ing in­ter­na­tion­al re­ports, Ram­bachan said there were 2.5 mil­lion hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims world­wide at any one time and deal­ers gen­er­ate bil­lions in prof­its every year.He slammed Point Fortin MP Paula Gopee-Scoon who ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of tak­ing too long to im­ple­ment draft leg­is­la­tion that the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion had cre­at­ed.

Gopee-Scoon said the on­ly rea­son the Gov­ern­ment was "rush­ing" to pass hu­man traf­fick­ing leg­is­la­tion was to pre­vent T&T from be­ing down­grad­ed in an in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing on how coun­tries dealth with the crime.Ram­bachan coun­tered that T&T signed the pro­to­col in 2001 but the PNM took six years to rat­i­fy it.Gopee-Scoon, sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment' leg­is­la­tion, but sug­gest­ing a num­ber of amend­ments, said mi­grant smug­gling wa s close­ly re­lat­ed to hu­man traf­fick­ing. She sug­gest­ed that law en­force­ment of­fi­cers checked Mur­ray Street, Wood­brook, Sweet Bri­ar Road and broth­els, adding every­body knew what she was talk­ing about.