GUARDIAN ME­DIA NEWS­ROOM

Top of­fi­cials at the Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit in the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty say the Unit is work­ing to en­sure more con­vic­tions for hu­man traf­fick­ing.

CTU Deputy Di­rec­tor Dane Marie Mar­shall says while the Unit is rel­a­tive­ly young—it has been in op­er­a­tion for 12 years—she would like to see more hu­man traf­fick­ers be­ing con­vict­ed.

The CTU deputy di­rec­tor notes that some­one charged with child traf­fick­ing faces a se­vere penal­ty—up to 25 years in prison, as well as a fine of $100,000.

“As a di­rec­torate, we are mov­ing to amend some of our leg­is­la­tion for traf­fick­ing in per­sons to bring about [more] con­vic­tions for this of­fence,” she re­vealed.  “We’ve on­ly [had] one. So, we need to do more work in en­sur­ing we have more num­bers in terms of con­vic­tions in this crime.”

And CTU Di­rec­tor, Al­lan Meiguel, point­ed to the sit­u­a­tion T&T faces with re­gard to mi­grants from South Amer­i­ca—Venezuela es­pe­cial­ly—en­ter­ing the coun­try il­le­gal­ly, and the fact that many of them are be­ing ex­ploit­ed every step along the way.

“There are mi­grant flows con­tin­u­ing.  It’s the promise of a bet­ter life and the dis­po­si­tion for ex­ploita­tion—those are the two key fac­tors,” he ex­plained.

“I don’t think I have seen suf­fi­cient changes on our south­ern bor­der in terms of eco­nom­ics and pol­i­tics that would make me feel a sense of com­fort that there may be a slow­ing down or stem­ming of mi­grant flows via the south­ern bor­der,” he added.

He al­so ex­pressed con­cern over the num­ber of per­sons be­ing re­port­ed miss­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Meiguel told Guardian Me­dia the Unit is work­ing to cat­e­gorise miss­ing per­sons in this coun­try, with a view to de­ter­min­ing ex­act­ly how many of them might be traf­fick­ing vic­tims.

“I have ob­served with sus­pi­cion all these young peo­ple that go miss­ing ... Are they vic­tims of traf­fick­ing? Some­thing is amiss in re­la­tion to all these young peo­ple that go miss­ing,” the CTU di­rec­tor said.

The Counter Traf­fick­ing Unit’s top of­fi­cials were guests on to­day’s edi­tion of CNC3's The Morn­ing Brew show.