Church presses for new law to check Human Trafficking

While internationally 12th December was observed as Anti–Human Trafficking Day, Churches and several voluntary agencies in the country initiated a campaign to request the government to enact a law to prevent human trafficking, particularly of women.

Caritas India, a national voluntary organisation of Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) for Social Concern and Development who has been engaged in countering human trafficking in the country for past 10 years by promoting prevention, protection, rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration at various levels said, it has prepared a draft legislation to be presented to parliamentarians this month.

The proposed legislation seeks compulsory registration of all domestic workers with an appropriate government agency. It also wants to provide these workers' minimum wages and other service conditions, such as a healthy work atmosphere, leave and pension.

Fr Varghese Mattamana, Executive Director Caritas India said human trafficking is the worse form of human rights violation. He emphasized on the pertinence of networking & collaboration if human trafficking is to be addressed effectively both at the place of origin and destination. He further added that a concerted response is the need of the hour.

"Human trafficking is a serious worldwide issue, as women are trafficked both for domestic work and prostitution. She said the focus of the day’s demonstration is on the problems of domestic workers and their demands for suitable legislation to provide regulation of their work, end exploitation, denial of fair wages and social security," says Ms. Jyostna Chatterjee of Joint Women’s Programme.

M. Shimray, who heads Caritas India's gender department, told UCA News that poor tribal women from the states of Assam, Jharkhand and Orissa are brought to cities and sold to sex racketeers.

On December 19, the organisation scheduled a meeting inviting Christian parliamentarians who will be handed over the draft after which the agency will officially present a copy to the federal labor, family and social welfare ministries.