Bangladesh is placed on Tier 2 Watch List for the third consecutive year in the US state department's 2011Trafficking in Persons Report for not fully complying with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking,
'Bangladesh is a source and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking,' says the TIP report released on Tuesday.
The state department's report says that a significant share of Bangladesh's trafficking victims consists of men recruited for work overseas with fraudulent employment offers who are subsequently exploited under conditions of forced labour or debt bondage.
Bangladeshi children and adults also are trafficked internally for commercial sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, and forced and bonded labour. Some children are sold into bondage by their parents while others are induced into labour or commercial sexual exploitation through fraud and physical coercion, according to the report.
'Internal trafficking often occurs from poorer, more rural regions, to locations with more commercial activity including Dhaka and Chittagong,' the report says.
The report, however, says that the Bangladesh government demonstrated an increased attention to the issue of human trafficking.
The government continued to address the sex trafficking of women and children, drafted and submitted a comprehensive anti-trafficking law to the cabinet, and created an interagency task force mandated to monitor recruiting agencies and
address high recruitment fees, the report says.
'We are very much on track to improve our situation… Inter-ministerial efforts are under way to check trafficking in persons as labour force,' the home ministry's joint secretary (political) Kamal Uddin Ahmed told New Age, talking about the report.
He claimed that Bangladesh's status would be better after the enactment of the anti-trafficking law.
The report says that Bangladesh, however, is not placed on Tier 3 per Section 107 of the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorisation Act as the government has shown evidence of a credible, written plan that, if implemented, would constitute making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is devoting sufficient resources to implement that plan.
The report says that the Bangladesh government has showed progress in convicting sex traffickers of females, but not traffickers of men.
Bangladeshi men and women migrate willingly to Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, the Maldives, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, Libya, Europe, and other countries for work often under legal and contractual terms, the US state department said in the report.
Most Bangladeshis who seek overseas employment through legal channels rely on the over 1,000 recruiting agencies belonging to the Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies.
These agencies are legally permitted to charge workers up to $1,235 and place workers in low-skilled jobs typically paying between $100 and $150 per month, but workers are sometimes charged $6,000 or more for these services, the report says.
Source : New Age
