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CARNIVAL is over, but when it comes to the handling of human trafficking in this country, our politicians continue to play ole mas.
The US Department of State’s 2022 Trafficking in Person Report was released in July. It seems to have only recently been discovered by the Government and the Opposition.
The report, which reaffirms this country’s Tier 2 “watch list” status, contains this damning sentence: “the government did not take action against senior government officials alleged in 2020 to be involved in human trafficking.”
Questioned about this in Parliament on Friday, the Prime Minister suggested the officials were from the Opposition, prompting Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar to counter by asking which Opposition members were currently senior government members.
Meanwhile, former UNC minister Devant Maharaj – who once challenged Ms Persad-Bissessar’s leadership – has now alleged some of his former colleagues were involved in trafficking.
On Sunday, Dr Rowley doubled down on his claims, stating official reports frequently refer to all parliamentarians as “senior government officials.”
None of this does anything to help the victims of human trafficking in this country.
In fact, treating this matter as a political football merely empowers wrongdoers and makes susceptible targets even more vulnerable because it distracts from the real problems in detecting and prosecuting criminal activity and divides efforts along partisan lines when this should be a non-partisan issue.
The truth is, both the PNM and UNC are implicated by the US Department of State’s report which laments the lack of progress when it comes to the prosecution of this crime. The lack of progress is so profound and systemic as to not be limited to one government or another.
While the Prime Minister correctly notes that the issue of a lack of convictions is strictly speaking not a matter under any government’s control, the failure of a range of institutions and agencies on this issue is directly related to the strength and efficacy of government policy.
Such policy is completely under the purview of Cabinet which should be concerned when serious crimes around it go unpunished, regardless of the party of the actors.
Though the allegations referred to in the report are not detailed, and though they appear to relate to matters that came to a head in 2020, the UNC also has a hand to play in this unfortunate situation having once held the reins of power.
Anyone who reads the full report will get a sense of the true gravity of the human trafficking problem in this country, a problem that reportedly involves official complicity and that features widespread institutional malaise ranging from those evident in the judiciary, police, specialist agencies and prosecutorial bodies.
Instead of mudslinging and attempting to score political points, all parties should be working together to empower law enforcement authorities to take more robust action.
The post Playing ole mas with human trafficking appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.