Mr. Speaker Sir, the course of justice should take its place. Most of the employment agencies and human trafficking syndicates have been identified but some are still walking scot free in this country. I want the Ministry of Home Affairs, to expedite the arrest and prosecution of the perpetrators. We understand that the Zimbabweans who were taken to Kuwait as victims, some of them have turned themselves into employment agencies. They are now calling their relatives in the villages asking them if they know people who need employment and asking them to register them and forward their details. Those people are just registering and are very excited that they are going to work outside the country. We all know that anything to do with outside the country is exciting to our people.
So, I was recommending that these people, the likes of Hazel Muchaneta and Lorraine Nhapata who are running an employment agency in Kuwait, be repatriated home or else surrender their citizenship, that they are no longer Zimbabweans. As much as the Ministry of Home Affairs is going to deal with the local employment agents, we still have other employment agents that have surfaced also in Kuwait. We are saying these employment agents should be rounded up. I have a list of names of these agencies, some were not registered as employment agencies but are individuals operating from their homes talking to someone in Kuwait, recruiting people and sending them there. But now they are threatening the victims and even if Home Affairs want to bring these people to book, the problem is there is no complainant. So, the laws should be there for the people and where is the law for the voiceless – those who have been threatened and are scared to go there? All these people will be freed because there is no complainant but it is not that they have not been perpetrating in the trafficking issue. They have been seriously in it but no one is reporting them. The Government is trying but the police will still throw away the case because there is no complainant.
It is a pity that some churches have been fingered in this human trafficking saga. Churches must remain focused on their core business and desist from such deals that violate the rights of other human beings. We understand that in these churches, people have prayer requests and some of them will write their requests on paper. While they are praying and holding their prayer requests, the agents are watching for those with job requests and after church, people are told that their prayers have been answered, there is a job in Kuwait. Mr. Speaker Sir, what I am saying also refers to that clip that I have already tabled for you.
Let me now come to the media, which has a critical role to play in sensitising citizens of these unscrupulous activities. I want to applaud the media for publishing various articles on the trafficking saga. However, negative reporting should not be tolerated. Mr. Speaker Sir, We do not tolerate things like this. I will read it out: ‘twenty-one more sex slaves arrive from Kuwait’. Is that positive? As much as they are reporting that twenty-one more have arrived but if we, ourselves are calling them sex slaves – we do not want and we do not need such negative reporting. Why is it that when the media is reporting anything about women, they always want to report in the negative. We are asking them to support us as women.
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