MoFa Undersecretary and Chairman of the National Committee on curbing human trafficking, Abdullah Abdullatif stressed on the need to work hand in hand with the governments of countries from where the victims of human trafficking are brought in. The governments in these countries need to put mechanisms in place to ensure that the workers know their rights and that the documentation done prior to the victims leaving the country are brought to the notice of the host country that accepts these workers.
The MoFa Undersecretary and Chairman of the National Committee on curbing human trafficking, paid gratitude to the expatriate community in the Kingdom of Bahrain for extending cooperation in building the economic, cultural and social ethos of the country. He also praised the leaders of the nation for the establishment of a new law on combating human trafficking in 2008. He said that concurrent to the implementation of the law was the establishment of new centres for women victims, establishment of a hotline and a news bulletin for the Indian and Filipino communities.
There is also a new plan to establish a centre for men, he said. Very akin to women the men are also subjected to concerns that border on human trafficking, he added. “Although Bahrain is not a country with enormous trafficking concerns, there are niggling issues and these cannot be swept under the carpet. It is also important to ensure complacency does not set in. The standards of regulations need to be upgraded in real time to ensure that the highest levels are maintained,” he said.
He said that the workshop was conducted by representative of the International Organization for Migration, Sara Karls, the Bahrain Interfaith Tolerance and Co-existence Society’s chairman, Priest Hani Aziz and the UN expert and Executive Director of the Project Protection against Human Trafficking in Hopkins University, USA, Professor Mohammed Mattar, in addition to local NGOs and other bodies.
“In our effort to combat trafficking in humans, cooperation has also been sought from the private sector, where most of the migrant labourers are,” he added.
Marwa Kuzbar, Head of Temporary Shelters at the Ministry of Social Developments, said that the conference helped spread awareness of the laws on trafficking. “For me it helped increase my knowledge in this particular area.”
Echoing the sentiments expressed by the undersecretary, Chairperson of the Migrant Workers Protection Society, Marietta Dias said that Bahrain was not demarcated concern geography for human trafficking. In the proper sense of it there is nothing to connect with trafficking.
“Bahrain is the first in the region to implement laws in this direction,” she added. “With the conference, I gather the nation is trying to improve its standards,” she said.
The MWPS chairperson added that proposals had been made to Mattar for imparting training in the various aspects of trafficking to the prosecution officials. “We look to these being implemented, so that there is no ambiguity and any case can be clearly dealt with,” she said.
Taking a leaf out of the real situation, she said, women are brought in from Ghana, by agents there who hire them as waitresses in restaurants, but these women end up working as housemaids in Bahrain. The agents who recruit these women often inform the authorities in Bahrain that they are being dispatched to work as domestic help. “When these women are asked to work in houses, they often decline and there are issues. If the government of Ghana can intervene, then such violations will cease,” she added.