Why we are saying this Mr. Speaker Sir? We know that we are not going to stop our people from going out there completely. If we cannot stop them, then let us find a way to protect them so that wherever they will be, they will be protected. I understand Kuwait and Malawi have got an agreement, why do we not have our Government look at that and see if it is user friendly in this country or come up with their own home grown agreement? Just for the benefit of this House, I just want to give statistics on sexual exploitation – Middle East and Africa, 53%; Americans 48%; East Asia, South Asia and the Pacific, 26%; Europe and Central Asia, 66%. Forced labour, servitude and slavery like in Africa and Middle East, 37%; Americans, 47%; South Asia and the Pacific, 64%; Europe and Central Asia 26%.
Mr. Speaker Sir, whilst I applaud the Government through what was done by the Embassy in Kuwait and commending the Government as well for enacting the Trafficking Persons Act of 2014 and constituting an Inter-Ministerial Committee on trafficking in persons comprising of the representatives of the Ministries and Departments of Home Affairs; Public Service, Labour and Social Services; Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development; Health and Child Care; Media, Information and Broadcasting Services, but we have never heard anything being publicised; Education, there you are, the girls are not being allowed to go to school; local Government; Foreign Affairs, the embassy there is not resourced and he does not have cars to go around and pick these girls; the National Prosecuting Authority; Registrar General; Immigration; the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Financial Intelligence Unit.
I however, note with concern that the Inter-Ministerial Committee has been silent until the recent cases of trafficking. Mr. Speaker Sir, we did not even know that it exists. At first, when we wanted to put notice of this motion before we stopped it allowing for the report to come in first, we were actually recommending that the Government come up with an Inter-Ministerial Committee, only to find out that it exists, but we have never heard about it. We have never heard what it is doing and we have never had awareness in any village, or any ward or in any city. No one knows what human trafficking is because sometimes when we think of human trafficking, we just think across borders
Mr. Speaker Sir, every member of the Inter-Ministerial Committee should play their part in addressing the problem of human trafficking. The Inter-Ministerial Committee should also look into issues of trafficking broadly as we are aware that a lot of trafficking is taking place in the country, intra-regionally and inter-regionally. I want to urge the Minister of Finance to prioritise the repatriation of the remaining trafficking victims in Kuwait, the IMO also to play its part. We do not want this issue of going to NAG for funding from other citizens when actually there are departments which are supposed to do that in Government. Also, the International Organisation on Migration (IOM) should frantically be there, providing funding to make sure that these girls still in Kuwait have got a safe place to stay in, food to eat and air-tickets to bring them home. We do not want – once the girls are discovered, for them to spend another three weeks waiting, when they have already been traumatized and continue being traumatized, wondering when they will get tickets to come back home. For example, the girls that I was telling you about earlier, who are in a basement at the moment, their parents are being requested to pay three thousand dollars ($3000) for them to be released. If they want the contact number, I will table the number of that employment agent.
Continued next page
(874 VIEWS)
