Based on the poor preparation from the Youth Transformation…. Human trafficking is happening in Tobago with Venezuelan women being brought in to have sex with men across the island. So revealed Allana Wheeler, Director of the Counter Trafficking unit in the Ministry of National Security, who said the human trafficking was being facilitated by a combination of a lack of security controls for the island and a turbulent economic situation in Venezuela.
There is no checking for vehicles, there is no checking for identification, there is no checking for anything. Even at the airports, there is no major kind of security taking place.
So, you can have victims of human trafficking…they will come and service clients that are here in Tobago and they will take them back by boat or plane to Trinidad. Once you have illegal guns, once you have a history of drugs, drug traffickers have graduated to trafficking persons. It is more profitable, it is less discoverable. Wheeler, holder of a Master's degree in National Security Studies, and who has worked in the field of National Security for the last 20 years, also said many foreigners and children fall victim to human trafficking through popular social media sites.
He was a homosexual boy who was looking for a job, and he joined an online social group. He wanted to get out of the island that he was in and he was offered a job in that social group which landed him in Trinidad. She said the young man was also forced to provide sexual services to many friends of the business owners. In Trinidad and Tobago , there was a time when the government did not admit that there was human trafficking. There was a time that the politicians did not admit. Now I could say that the period was The government realised that it was happening, there was statistics being collected.
So, there was a pattern developing about 10 years ago that was discovered, so the government developed policies and policy lead to legislation. Before that, if you caught prostitutes in a brothel, immediately they would be deported, they would be deemed illegal and they will be charged and brought before the courts.
