Stability in homes, education and enforcement are the three fronts on which the government is prepared to combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP), according to President David Granger.
According to the Head of State, a big part of the scourge has to do with the stability of households since extreme poverty and other problems can lure children into the interior and they are then trafficked.
“Something is happening in the family structure, something is happening that allows young girls, underage girls to go into those areas. Sometimes they could be induced or enticed by a person who makes false promises…,” President Granger said.
For years the magnitude of the trafficking problem has been downplayed and the former PPP/C administration had denied that the problem was serious and publicly disputed the annual US State Department report on trafficking in Guyana. As Opposition Leader, Granger had introduced a motion in the National Assembly calling for a commission of inquiry into human trafficking.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday after the taping of the Ministry of the Presidency’s television programme, the ‘Public’s Interest,’ the Head of State said that even law enforcement officers are involved in trafficking and for the government it means better equipping the police force. He spoke of a young girl who was trafficked in the backdam and the mother could not have gone to the site as it was the very miners who would have probably done the trafficking who owned the all-weather vehicles in the area. He said while in the past some may have regarded trafficking victims as persons who made lifestyle choices, his administration will not take that view as an underage girl cannot make such a choice.
More work will be done in ensuring that young girls are educated and there will be more enforcement of the laws as it is the government’s responsibility to protect vulnerable citizens, such as young boys and girls.
According to the Head of State, while there is a home for victims, the intention is to have a halfway house so that when victims are rescued they don’t end up sleeping on the floor of a police station as occurred in the past. A safe house will be found in Bartica or Mahdia, after which the victims would be brought out and counselled and preferably united with their families as the government does not want to create institutions which turn out to be almost like prisons.
“The best place for our young women and men to grow up is in a family, a family that loves and cares for them. That is what we want to see,” the president added.
Asked about further training for the police force, whose members are sometimes seen as ill-equipped to investigate the crime, the President said there is a plan even though there has been training in the past. He said part of the problem is the need for more female police officers who are likely to be more sympathetic to victims.
For a third consecutive year, the US State Department’s annual trafficking report placed Guyana on the Tier-2 Watch List, which is for countries where governments do not fully comply with the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into compliance. The latest report said that Guyana was granted a waiver from an otherwise required downgrade to Tier 3 because the government has a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, and it has committed to devoting sufficient resources to implement that plan.
For years, the then PPP/C government had strenuously objected to the US report on Guyana. As recently as last year, then minister of Human Services and Social Security Jennifer Webster had said that once more the scope of the problem in Guyana was being misrepresented in the report. She had said that Guyana had not been fairly reviewed.
In the latest report, Guyana is once more described as a source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labour and it noted that some police officers were found to be complicit in trafficking crimes and that corruption impedes anti-trafficking efforts
In an interview shortly after the release of the report, Junior Minister of Social Protection Simona Broomes, who led a campaign against TIP as then President of the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO), had said that Guyana would have been moving to mount a comprehensive response to human trafficking.
