The Gov­ern­ment soon will pass laws to per­se­cute peo­ple in­volved in hu­man traf­fick­ing.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brig John Sandy made the dis­clo­sure af­ter a Cab­i­net meet­ing in To­ba­go by the Peo­ple Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment at the Co­co Reef Ho­tel, Crown Point, yes­ter­day. Sandy said the ini­tial re­search sug­gest­ed the prob­lem was a grow­ing con­cern in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

He said: "Sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta in­di­cates that the of­fence of traf­fick­ing in per­sons is evolv­ing in T&T at an un­com­fort­able rate. It is one as­pect of transna­tion­al or­gan­ised crime which is a rapid­ly grow­ing phe­nom­e­non across the globe. "In the past ten years, trade in hu­man car­go has been grow­ing and it is cur­rent­ly the sec­ond most prof­itable crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty world­wide, along with arms traf­fick­ing and sur­passed on­ly by nar­cotics." ?He said Cab­i­net in­tend­ed to draft leg­is­la­tion to en­force the Unit­ed Na­tions pro­to­col on the pre­ven­tion of hu­man traf­fick­ing.