Gov’t exploring proactive ways to tackle Trafficking in Persons

The government has been working assiduously to maintain a tier one status in Trafficking in Persons (TIP).

Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Dr Vindhya Persaud accredits this significant achievement to the government’s Counter Trafficking in Persons Unit and the recently passed Counter Trafficking in Persons Act.

Minister Persaud disclosed a series of initiatives set to be rolled out to aid in tackling TIP in the country, in collaboration with the Ministry of Home Affairs.

“There will be a national task force, co-chaired by both ministers and there is an action plan and whilst all of that is happening the commencement orders goes into force and we are able to utilise that.

We have also been working on the regulation and we have been working on having a standard operations procedure that directs how we respond,” she announced during an interview on Friday.

Additionally, the minister underscored the ministry’s continued effort of expanding its  unit to cater to cases of trafficking that exceeds successful raids.

She noted that the ministry has been ramping up on its awareness campaigns through the means of marches, public service announcements (PSA’s) and training of citizens and officers.

The training programmes are focused educating a person on how to identify cases of trafficking, how to report and importantly, how to respond to these cases.

Considering the fact that trafficking happens in plain sight, the ministry has taken a proactive approach by developing a hand signal victims can use to seek help.

In addition, to the government’s zero tolerance approach to TIP, the ministry launched a 24- hour Spanish hotline to allow Spanish/Portuguese speaking persons to report trafficking. Complementing the existing hotline that caters for English speaking persons.

“In the new law we have looked at all of those areas given guidance, look at the fines and the penalties, the punitive measures so that we can have deterrence to the   occurrence of trafficking in persons. We also look at our borders and how we can train persons and those are key areas that we are continuing to work on,” the minister emphasised.

Meanwhile, the ministry is examining new methods of approach to better cater for children that are being trafficked.