By Allieu Sahid Tunkara
An anti-trafficking organization has called for more budgetary allocation to the Ministry of Social Welfare to enable it appropriately respond to an increasing spate of human trafficking across Sierra Leone.
The annual allocation to the ministry has hoovered below 1 percent over the last decade.
Advocacy Movement Network (AMNet), a local non-governmental organization, said the Ministry of riddled with structural inefficiencies, including acute shortage of personnel and lack of sufficient vehicles which prevents it from executing its mandate well.
The Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) is responsible for the promotion of social welfare and the protection of women and children from illegal acts, including human trafficking. But a major obstacle to this has been low budgetary allocation.
The result, said Brima Conteh, Child Protection Officer of AMNET, makes it difficult for the ministry to properly dispense its functions.
“In almost all MSWGCA offices I visited, a greater number of personnel are volunteers,” he told a forum on combating human trafficking. This situation, Conteh added, has created the syndrome of unprofessionalism as most of the volunteers were not on pay roll.
“They demand moneys especially transport fares from clients for their movement from one place to another,” he said.
The forum, held on June 6, was convened in collaboration with the International Office for Migration.
Sierra Leone’s anti-human trafficking law was enacted in 2005 and it provides the legal basis for for counter-trafficking measures in the country. The Act notably provides for an inter-ministerial collaboration mechanism, particularly with the Crime Services Unit of the Sierra Leone Police (SLP).
The passage of the law culminated into a series of trainings for law enforcement agencies, notably the Family Support Unit, the Criminal Investigation Department, the Transnational Organized Crime Unit and relevant officials of the MSWGCA.
The SLP has 76 FSU stations and posts across the country, charged with the responsibility to detect, prevent and investigate offences against women and children, particularly incidents of human trafficking. But the unit is constrained in terms staff strength and logistics.
The inability of the relevant institutions to adequately respond to emerging issues has transformed Sierra Leone to both a source and transit point for trafficking, according to AMNET which said it has identified several countries where Sierra Leonean children are mostly trafficked to, notably Nigeria, Guinea Bissau, Cote D’voire and some European countries.
“Sierra Leone is source, transit and destination country for children and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sex exploitation,” said Conteh.
He added that the rampant sale of human parts and organs is very common in those countries and is a factor for trafficking. According to the activist, a kidney costs about 30,000 euros in the illegal market.
Conteh also lamented the practice of internal trafficking of children from the provinces to urban centers. He said this way many children are exposed to odd jobs, thereby damaging their future.
The AMNET official made reference to the controversial HANCI-SL adoption case involving hundreds of children. The children were allegedly trafficked abroad through an adoption scheme that has been the subject of legal suit.
“The parents surrendered those children out of complete ignorance,” Conteh said. He noted that his organization was preparing to embark on a door-to-door public education campaign to educate parents on the dangers of giving out their children to potential traffickers.
Edna Koroma, Gender Officer at AMNet, cited Kailahun as one district where human trafficking is rampant in the eastern region, citing early marriage as one fueling factor of this. Most of the trafficked children in Kailahun, she said, find their way to Guinea, thanks to the porosity of the borders.
“Out of 56 border crossing points in Kailahun District, only 12 are manned by the security forces,” Ms Koroma said. She also singled out Koinadugu and Kambia in the north as districts where incidents of human trafficking occur very often.
According to her, Koinadugu has 7 unmanned border crossing points located at Bafodia, Sinkunia and Mongor, among others. Most of the children trafficked are brought from the nearby villages to Kabala town, where they run the risk of being trafficked across the border into Guinea.
But between the two northern district, Kambia is said to have a more alarming trend of human trafficking. The activist said presently the police were investigating a matter involving six trafficked children.
“We can reduce trafficking of these children if we come together,” she appealed.
MSWGCA Chief Social Services Officer admitted the constraints faced by the ministry, especially low budgetary allocation. But Mohamed Sinnah intimated that strategies were being worked out to overcome them. He disclosed that the ministry was on the verge of recruiting social workers en masse to fill in vacancies at various MSWGCA offices across the country.
“We are working very hard to ensure that we employ university graduates as social workers and put them on the appropriate grade,” Mr Sinnah told Politico in an interview.
© 2019 Politico Online
