JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

As the coun­try com­mem­o­rates Hu­man Traf­fick­ing Aware­ness Month, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds says a labour in­spec­torate will soon be in­tro­duced to ad­dress labour ex­ploita­tion.

Speak­ing on Wednes­day night at the screen­ing of a short film to pro­mote the aware­ness of hu­man traf­fick­ing, the Min­is­ter said while sex­u­al ex­ploita­tion is a ma­jor con­cern with hu­man traf­fick­ing, labour ex­ploita­tion is of equal con­cern.

Min­is­ter Hinds says this new arm of the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit comes as the Unit in­creased the num­ber of cas­es it pur­sued be­tween 2022 and 2023, from 22 to 77.

“We have iden­ti­fied that most of the traf­fick­ing that we have is in the sex trade and sex traf­fick­ing.  But labour traf­fick­ing is not un­known to us,” he told Guardian Me­dia.  “We've seen a few cas­es of that where per­sons are brought and made to work in a traf­fick­ing con­text.”

“In that re­gard, we need to fo­cus on that as­pect of the crime, and a labour in­spec­torate will be in there with ex­per­tise in the busi­ness of labour and labour re­la­tions,” he con­firmed, “and will be able to iden­ti­fy the labour traf­fick­ing cas­es that come up for pros­e­cu­tion.”

In 2024, af­ter se­cur­ing its first con­vic­tion for hu­man traf­fick­ing, this coun­try moved up one tier in the US Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Re­port.