Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has vowed to pro­vide the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) with all the re­sources it needs to com­bat hu­man traf­fick­ing, which he de­scribed as “mod­ern-day slav­ery.”

Alexan­der was speak­ing on Wednes­day evening at Queen’s Hall dur­ing a spe­cial the­atre pro­duc­tion ti­tled Traf­fic in the Cap­i­tal, host­ed by the CTU to mark World Day Against Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons.

As the na­tion ob­serves African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day to­day, the min­is­ter drew par­al­lels be­tween the transat­lantic slave trade and con­tem­po­rary hu­man traf­fick­ing.

“Let us as a peo­ple not for­get we can­not just be an in­de­pen­dent na­tion, and we still have slav­ery ex­ist­ing in the world,” he said.

Alexan­der’s re­marks come in the wake of a ma­jor CTU-led op­er­a­tion last month, in which po­lice dis­cov­ered 12 Venezue­lan women and a 16-year-old girl dur­ing a raid on a St Vin­cent Street res­i­dence in Tu­na­puna. In to­tal, 17 peo­ple were found, in­clud­ing two men aged 21 and 28 and two ba­bies un­der three years old.

Chal­leng­ing the TTPS and its part­ner agen­cies to in­ten­si­fy their ef­forts, Alexan­der asked: “Why are we here at this time? Is it enough? Are we do­ing enough?

“I should ask the mem­bers of the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit. I should ask my col­league and friends in dif­fer­ent agen­cies. I should ask the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice—are we do­ing enough? Is it enough to move us from Tier Two to Tier One?”

The for­mer se­nior su­per­in­ten­dent stressed that women and chil­dren re­main par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to ex­ploita­tion.

“If we ex­pose our women to this type of in­san­i­ty, then our fu­ture is dim,” he said. “We can­not go on like this—smile every day, eat well—while there are chil­dren who have nev­er been giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be a child, to be ed­u­cat­ed, but are tossed in the hands of men.”

Alexan­der com­mend­ed the CTU for its work and is­sued a point­ed mes­sage to those who prey on the vul­ner­a­ble.

“To the men who seek to ex­ploit women and chil­dren, look deep with­in your­selves and stop al­low­ing per­sons to ex­pe­ri­ence such in­san­i­ty.”

The min­is­ter re­it­er­at­ed his com­mit­ment to strength­en­ing the CTU’s re­sources as part of a na­tion­al push to erad­i­cate hu­man traf­fick­ing and im­prove the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al rank­ing on an­ti-traf­fick­ing ef­forts.