Latest update February 22nd, 2025 5:49 AM

Guyana's largest selling daily and New York's most popular weekly

Latest News

Human trafficking

May 19, 2012 Editorial

A few years ago the United States of America threatened sanctions against Guyana if it did not tighten legislation that would make it a punishable offence to have people trafficked. Guyana for its part never accepted that people were being trafficked within its borders.
It was known that people left their homes in whichever part of the country to seek employment elsewhere. For years, some hinterland people, particularly young women, would leave their homes and head to the coast in search of employment.
Many, because of their academic limitations, would seek those jobs they thought best suited their ability. The result is that they became waitresses, cleaners and domestics. Because bars and nightclubs proliferated these girls were readily employed. Some of them were asked to provide other services.
Things get murky at this point. Because of the money, and it surely was not much, there were those girls who acquiesced to the demand for extra services. But similarly, there were those who balked. These were the people who may have fuelled the reports of human trafficking because there were the reports of the employers withholding pay, threatening these girls with punishment and sometimes even beating some of them. These reports did not go unnoticed.
In the wake of the pressure from the United States, investigations were mounted. The suspects would not readily admit to any form of trafficking and the girls, knowing that they could not readily earn the kind of money they got, would deny any wrongdoing on the part of their employers. But more than that, the investigators would conduct the investigations in the presence of both the employer and the victim. This would not be the best possible thing. Sometimes there were breaks but if one were to look at the prosecutions one would doubt that there is human trafficking.
There are just no convictions. Sometimes the victims would just not testify.
A point to note is that many in Guyana were operating on the belief that someone had to take a victim from his or her place of abode and move that person to another location. However, the law is now clear. If one is lured by the promise of certain employment and a certain pay, then offered something else far removed from either the job or the pay, that is human trafficking. The authorities now say that human trafficking is the slave trade of this era.
A report by the United Nations commission on refugees identified Guyana as a major human trafficking destination. This is not strange given the burgeoning gold trade. Large numbers of foreigners have been trekking to Guyana, some coming at the behest of miners who need cheap labour. The Guyanese authorities place the number of foreigners at some 15,000 in the gold fields alone.
This creates conditions for prostitution, forced labour and of course other criminal activity. Guyana cannot patrol its hinterland so the illegal trade in flesh would bloom. We have seen people walking along the coast and soliciting young girls. Until the police raided a camp, and until one girl managed to contact her mother with the news that she had been taken to the interior and tricked, the nation paid little attention to the happenings there.
Similarly, the nation ignored the repeated publications of missing persons—many of them people in their early teens.  There have never been so many young people going missing at any time in recent memory. Poverty and peer pressure may very well fuel the rush by these very young people to enter into an environment that would see them being abused.
That prostitution comes easily to the female of the species is a given. So, young girls readily place themselves in a position to provide sexual services. For those who intend to capitalize on the earning, it is not important that the invitation to offer sexual services has its risks. The end justifies the means.
And so we notice the recent involvement of the United Nations Development Programme to help fight human trafficking. It is giving money to Guyana to help educate victims of human trafficking. Indeed, we feel that the decline in the quality of education in the country has helped fuel human trafficking in the country. The uneducated victims are among the most gullible

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| February, 14th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Everest Masters to engage Costa Rica in T20 fixtures

Everest Masters to engage Costa Rica in T20 fixtures

Feb 21, 2025

Kaieteur Sports- The Everest Cricket Club Masters will take on host Costa Rica in several T20 matches over the weekend. The squad departed Guyana on Wednesday and skipper Rajesh Singh expressed...
Read More
GCB saddened at passing of Former GCB Vice-President, BCB President Lennox Phillips

GCB saddened at passing of Former GCB...

Feb 21, 2025

Guyana/Barbados battle as opening round gets underway from February 24

Guyana/Barbados battle as opening round gets...

Feb 21, 2025

ESCL T20 starts March 2

ESCL T20 starts March 2

Feb 21, 2025

Guyana boys team selected for 2025 PAHF Jr Challenge

Guyana boys team selected for 2025 PAHF Jr...

Feb 20, 2025

Mainstay Goldstar FC receives NSC support ahead of GFF Elite League debut

Mainstay Goldstar FC receives NSC support ahead...

Feb 20, 2025

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Freedom of speech is our core value at Kaieteur News. If the letter/e-mail you sent was not published, and you believe that its contents were not libellous, let us know, please contact us by phone or email.

Feel free to send us your comments and/or criticisms.
Contact: 624-6456; 225-8452; 225-8458; 225-8463; 225-8465; 225-8473 or 225-8491.
Or by Email: [email protected] / [email protected]

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]