In a bid to clamp down on cheats defrauding thousands on the pretext of arranging for jobs overseas, as well as, to stop human trafficking across the Indo-Bangladesh border, the cabinet with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Monday approved a new draft law that has provided for death sentence to traffickers.
The law is titled ‘the Human Trafficking Prevention and Protection Act, 2011’.
According to officials of the women and children affairs ministry, about 20,000 Bangladeshis, specially women and children, are smuggled out of the country every year.
Sources in the expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment ministry said, thousands of Bangladeshis are now being held in foreign prisons, shelters and detention centers awaiting deportation. They went abroad on being cheated by a section of human traffickers in the name of being provided with lucrative jobs there.
Home secretary Abdus Sobhan Sikder told the Independent in Dhaka on Monday, “The authorities have, so far, been unable to take steps against the human traffickers, due to the absence of proper laws in this regard”. “We’re hopeful that the proposed law will help stop human trafficking,” the home secretary added.
According to the proposed law, which covers protection against forcing anyone in to prostitution, or any kind of sexual exploitation and torture, no person can enjoy any profit from engaging anyone into prostitution or production of pornography, its distribution to make money; forced labour and services, debt bondage or servitude, bonded labour or domestic servitude; exploitation-repression through false marriage, forcing anyone into begging or making a person crippled, by forced amputation, for profit.
The draft of the law proposes that for speedy trial for the crimes, the government would set up, in every district, a human trafficking crime prevention tribunal, helmed by a judge in the rank of a session’s judge.
The tribunal will complete trials for any complaint within 180 days of framing of charges. Until the formation of such tribunals, the government can assign the women’s and children’s repression tribunal to try human traffickers, in those districts.
At any point of the trial, the authorities can order the confiscation of assets of the accused, under the act. They can also order seizure of any house, land or vehicles, used by the offenders. Confiscated assets will be handed over to the proposed ‘anti-human trafficking fund’, which will be set up after enactment of the law.
This fund will be used to help different agencies, including Bangladeshi missions abroad, to fight human trafficking.
The tribunal will be empowered to order convicted offenders to pay reasonable sums as compensation to victims of trafficking, apart from realising fines from the accused.
The law proposes to empower officers investigating human trafficking cases to conduct searches and arrest of
the accused and travel abroad, if necessary, for investigations.
The draft law proposes formation of a ‘National Anti-Human Trafficking Authority’, comprising a chairperson and two members – one of them a woman – to combat the menace and supervise the effective application of the law.
-With The Independent input
