Rights activists at a meeting have urged the government to take effective steps to implement the existing laws aiming to check trafficking of the country’s migrant workers.
They said the government should create skilled manpower by giving them quality training as per requirement of oversea job markets with a view to preventing the workers from trafficking.
Solidarity Center – Bangladesh Office and SAARCLAW jointly organised the ‘Stakeholders Advocacy Meeting on Analysis and Application of the Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act, 2012’ at a city hotel on Saturday, a press release said.
Speaking as the chief guest, director general of the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training Salim Reza said the government is showing ‘zero tolerance’ to trafficking.
Highlighting the migrants’ role in the country’s economy, he said they sent over US$ 15 billion of remittance to Bangladesh last year.
Salim said the Awami League government in its election manifesto is committed to building skilled workers at upazila level so that they could be sent abroad at lower cost.
SAARCLAW secretary general Muhammad Mohsin Rashid stressed the need for creating mass awareness to prevent human trafficking.
He suggested the BMET to provide training the country’s youths for making them skilled for better jobs in the Europe countries.
“Whole Europe is still green. Teach the aspirant migrants German and French languages,” he said.
Supreme Court lawyer Barrister Lutfun Kadir made a power-point presentation on ‘Explanation of Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act, 2012’.
Bangladesh National Women Lawyers’ Association president Advocate Fowzia Karim Feroze, Solidarity Center’s country programme director Christopher K Johnson, its senior programme officer Dr Lily Gomes, trade union leader Nazma Akter, WARBE Development Foundation director Jasiya Khatoon and BOMSA chairman Lily Jahan, among others, spoke at the meeting.
