Joshua Seemu­n­gal

While most mi­grants in the il­lic­it hu­man traf­fick­ing trade en­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go via plane through Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port or through the south-west penin­su­la via boats from Venezuela, the ma­jor­i­ty of hu­man traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in the coun­try take place in cen­tral Trinidad.

This was re­vealed to the Sun­day Guardian by Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit (CTU) sources.

But while cen­tral Trinidad was iden­ti­fied as the num­ber one hotspot, sources said there were large num­bers of re­ports of traf­fick­ing in places like Port-of-Spain, To­ba­go, east Trinidad, name­ly Ari­ma, as well as oth­er ar­eas in south-east and south-west Trinidad.

Ac­cord­ing to the CTU sources, orig­i­nal­ly most hu­man traf­fick­ing op­er­a­tions seemed to have tak­en place in es­tab­lish­ments in Cen­tral that front­ed as bars but were broth­els, but now it is most­ly per­pet­u­at­ed by peo­ple who use small busi­ness­es as fronts.

They said the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered sug­gests that those in­volved in the il­lic­it trade range from the high­est to the low­est mem­bers of so­ci­ety, as T&T has an in­creas­ing and seem­ing­ly in­sa­tiable ap­petite for com­mer­cial sex.

How­ev­er, de­spite the thriv­ing il­lic­it trade, not a sin­gle per­son has been con­vict­ed of hu­man traf­fick­ing of­fences since the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Act in 2011.

“It’s Cen­tral where the most re­ports come from. Cunu­pia, and in dif­fer­ent parts of Cen­tral. It’s most­ly peo­ple who have small busi­ness­es. So they are run­ning a spa or bar or a night­club.

“You will do in­tel and you will col­lect dif­fer­ent types of in­tel that you could do. Some­times you get a re­port com­ing in and the re­port could come in through one of the po­lice sta­tions or some­thing, or some­times you may get rel­a­tives who are out­side of the coun­try try­ing to get con­tact through In­ter­pol or the em­bassy and stuff to say they have this rel­a­tive who is in that sit­u­a­tion,” a Counter-Traf­fick­ing Unit source said.

Ac­cord­ing to CTU sources, the lat­est avail­able da­ta on the is­sue from the unit was made avail­able in 2020 in the 18th Re­port of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Hu­man Rights, Equal­i­ty and Di­ver­si­ty on In­quiry in­to the Treat­ment of Mi­grants with a spe­cif­ic fo­cus on Rights to Ed­u­ca­tion, Em­ploy­ment and Pro­tec­tion from Sex­u­al Ex­ploita­tion.

Be­tween 2013 and 2019, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice re­ceived 484 re­ports of hu­man traf­fick­ing. Of those re­ports, a lit­tle more than half, 256, were in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

119 peo­ple were con­firmed to be hu­man traf­fick­ing vic­tims, while 57 peo­ple were charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing of­fences.

On­ly nine of the 57 peo­ple charged be­tween 2013 and 2019 were com­mit­ted to stand tri­al. That rep­re­sent­ed just 16 per cent of those charged.

“The CTU was of the view that the lack of con­vic­tions for hu­man traf­fick­ing was not a true re­flec­tion of the cur­rent re­al­i­ty in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” an ex­cerpt of the re­port stat­ed.

“They at­trib­uted the ze­ro con­vic­tion rate for the years 2016-2019 to the fol­low­ing chal­lenges: The progress of hu­man traf­fick­ing mat­ters in courts; The Ju­di­cia­ry de­cides when and how all court mat­ters are to be heard; Vic­tims were of­ten un­will­ing or un­avail­able to wait years for the start and com­ple­tion of court mat­ters; and more judges and mag­is­trates need­ed to be sen­si­tised on how to treat with hu­man traf­fick­ing cas­es and vic­tims in court.”

Mi­gra­tion and hu­man traf­fick­ing ex­pert Dr Jus­tine Pierre, who led a team con­duct­ing the Car­i­fo­rum/Cari­com Hu­man Traf­fick­ing re­search project in 2019, said that no­body from the Gov­ern­ment had con­tact­ed his team to dis­cuss the hu­man traf­fick­ing find­ings af­ter it was re­leased.

The re­port lists places where hu­man traf­fick­ing oc­curred, the num­ber of peo­ple in­volved in the trade, and the known hu­man traf­fick­ing routes in the mas­sive hu­man traf­fick­ing ring.

More re­cent­ly, the US De­part­ment of State’s 2022 Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port found that while the Gov­ern­ment is mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts, it does not ful­ly meet the min­i­mum stan­dards for the elim­i­na­tion of traf­fick­ing.

As a re­sult, the coun­try was placed on the Tier 2 Watch list, mean­ing that as a ju­ris­dic­tion T&T was not ful­ly com­pli­ant, but mak­ing “sig­nif­i­cant ef­forts” to be com­pli­ant.

The re­port found that of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty re­mained a sig­nif­i­cant con­cern.

23 new traf­fick­ing cas­es were in­ves­ti­gat­ed in 2021, in­clud­ing nine for sex traf­fick­ing and five for labour traf­fick­ing.

The pros­e­cu­tion of 15 sus­pect­ed sex traf­fick­ers, in­clud­ing three po­lice of­fi­cers, was ini­ti­at­ed in 2021. In 2020, two al­leged traf­fick­ers were pros­e­cut­ed.

“The Gov­ern­ment has nev­er con­vict­ed a traf­fick­er un­der its 2011 an­ti-traf­fick­ing law. Cor­rup­tion and of­fi­cial com­plic­i­ty in traf­fick­ing crimes re­mained sig­nif­i­cant con­cerns, in­hibit­ing law en­force­ment ac­tion, and the Gov­ern­ment did not take ac­tion against se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials al­leged in 2020 to be in­volved in hu­man traf­fick­ing.”

CTU was not giv­en enough re­sources by Govt

Ac­cord­ing to the 2022 re­port, “The CTU was re­spon­si­ble for traf­fick­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in all ju­ris­dic­tions but lacked suf­fi­cient fund­ing, staffing re­sources, and ex­per­tise to ad­e­quate­ly ful­fil its man­date.”

The find­ings that the CTU lacked suf­fi­cient re­sources were cor­rob­o­rat­ed by the for­mer di­rec­tor of the unit, Alana Wheel­er.

She said in the last two years as di­rec­tor—2021 and 2022—the unit re­ceived $2 mil­lion in fund­ing per an­num. In a pre­vi­ous year, she re­ceived $6 mil­lion.

Wheel­er said while all gov­ern­ment de­part­ments want more re­sources, the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit is too small and un­der­staffed to deal with such a large prob­lem as hu­man traf­fick­ing.

“You have com­mer­cial sex that is so ram­pant in Trinidad. So once you have com­mer­cial sex, and it’s ram­pant, and a high de­mand for com­mer­cial sex, you will have traf­fick­ing…They re­al­ly need to put more en­er­gy and ef­fort in­to it. You had a Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit with­out a di­rec­tor for eight months. What does that say?

“I will say for sure that the unit that was es­tab­lished was nev­er re­al­ly equipped with all the re­sources it re­quired, in terms of staffing, hu­man re­sources, and al­so the fi­nances and fund­ing to re­al­ly pro­vide an ad­e­quate re­sponse at the gov­ern­ment lev­el…At a gov­ern­ment lev­el, the unit set-up was not pro­vid­ed with the re­sources in terms of hu­man re­sources and staffing,” Wheel­er said in a phone in­ter­view with the Sun­day Guardian.

The for­mer CTU di­rec­tor said the plan of ac­tion put for­ward by the unit dur­ing her tenure took two years to be ap­proved by the Gov­ern­ment, while it took three years to open a shel­ter for mi­grant chil­dren.

And as a re­sult of in­suf­fi­cient re­sources dur­ing her tenure, she said, they did not have ba­sic things like spe­cial­ist shel­ters or ad­e­quate psy­cho­log­i­cal ser­vices avail­able for vic­tims.

“The politi­cians are the ones who al­lo­cate re­sources and pri­ori­tise what is im­por­tant at the na­tion­al lev­el. So if the pri­or­i­ty is giv­en to cli­mate change, that’s where the re­sources will go. If pri­or­i­ty is giv­en to dis­as­ter man­age­ment, that’s where it will go. So they are the ones re­al­ly pri­ori­tis­ing the bud­get; the na­tion­al bud­get.

“So I think I know funds were al­lo­cat­ed to the last plan of ac­tion. I’m not sure how much funds were al­lo­cat­ed, but it was Cab­i­net ap­proved and they did al­lo­cate funds. So, you want to see that. And at the polic­ing lev­el too, you want to see more ef­forts from the law en­force­ment per­spec­tive. Not just the po­lice but you have im­mi­gra­tion that is work­ing on this is­sue be­cause we are deal­ing with mi­grants, a lot of mi­grants as vic­tims. But then you have com­plic­i­ty. So you don’t know how much of that is re­al­ly af­fect­ing that push,” she said.

Wheel­er served as CTU di­rec­tor from 2016 to Ju­ly 2022. For six years, she func­tioned as both the deputy di­rec­tor and di­rec­tor of the unit. The unit re­mained with­out a di­rec­tor for eight months af­ter she left, Wheel­er said.

In Jan­u­ary, Dr Saman­tha Chaitram was ap­point­ed as the CTU’s new di­rec­tor.

His­to­ry of traf­fick­ing charges

• ↓In Jan­u­ary 2015, An­tho­ny Smith of Tu­na­puna was charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing af­ter po­lice raid­ed a house in Arou­ca.

• ↓In 2015, Sandy Be­dase-An­drews and Eli Sylvester, who al­leged­ly worked at a once well-known es­tab­lish­ment in Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas, were charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing.

• ↓In Au­gust 2018, Jem­mel Bap­tiste of Ma­yaro was charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing.

• ↓In Ju­ly 2019, Chi­nese na­tion­al Chang Boa Wang was charged with traf­fick­ing mi­nors.

• ↓In Feb­ru­ary 2020, two se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers–Ra­jesh Gokool of La Ro­main and Richard Lal­be­har­ry of Chase Vil­lage were charged with traf­fick­ing a Venezue­lan mi­nor.

• ↓In June 2022, five peo­ple (among them two for­eign na­tion­als and a po­lice of­fi­cer) were charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing of­fences that al­leged­ly took place in Ari­ma.

• ↓In Sep­tem­ber 2022, Haqqan Ali and Mar­i­oxi Tru­jil­lo–both from Chase Vil­lage, Ch­agua­nas, were charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing of­fences.

• ↓In Oc­to­ber 2022, Venezue­lan Six­to Rafael Car­rion was charged with hu­man traf­fick­ing.

None have been con­vict­ed