Hu­man traf­fick­ing is a mat­ter of na­tion­al con­cern which has al­so en­gaged the at­ten­tion of the Po­lice Ser­vice. Supt Car­lyle Hug­gins of West­ern Di­vi­sion said yes­ter­day that the po­lice were work­ing close­ly with mem­bers of the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion, In­ter­pol, the An­ti-Kid­nap­ping Unit to clamp down on this ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ty. He said in­for­ma­tion of peo­ple who en­tered the coun­try il­le­gal­ly and who were found in broth­els, clubs and oth­er places of dis­re­pute and in­for­ma­tion re­lat­ing to miss­ing peo­ple were be­ing looked at to de­ter­mine whether they were traf­ficked in or out of the coun­try. In this year's Traf­fick­ing In Per­sons Re­port, Trinidad and To­ba­go main­tained the rank­ing at Tier 2.

This is re­served for coun­tries which do not ful­ly com­ply with the min­i­mum stan­dards for the elim­i­na­tion of hu­man traf­fick­ing but which are mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts to do so. The re­port iden­ti­fied T&T as a des­ti­na­tion, source, and tran­sit coun­try for adults and chil­dren sub­ject­ed to sex traf­fick­ing and adults sub­ject­ed to forced labour. It added women and girls from South Amer­i­ca and the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic were al­so sub­ject­ed to sex traf­fick­ing in Trin­bag­on­ian broth­els and clubs. Hug­gins said the Po­lice Ser­vice was al­so in the process of im­ple­ment­ing ad­min­is­tra­tive guide­lines and has trained more than 700 po­lice of­fi­cers on the is­sue of hu­man traf­fick­ing. "We are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing re­ports of miss­ing peo­ple and ag­gres­sive­ly pur­su­ing in­tel­li­gence gath­ered on this is­sue," he said.