The arrest of eight suspected human traffickers in March this year in Zimbabwe has exposed how entrenched the crime has become in the country.

 

Zimbabwe, a country weighed down by the serious economic meltdown, high unemployment rate and crippling droughts, has become a fertile hunting ground for human traffickers who are targeting young women.

 

 

Traffickers are enticing young women with non-existent better lucrative employment opportunities mostly inAsian countries, but many of the women end up in domestic and sex servitude.

 

The Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) busted the alleged human trafficking ring which was luring desperate female jobseekers with promises of rewarding jobs in Kuwait.

 

The suspects, seven Zimbabwe nationals and one Kuwait national- appeared at a Harare magistrate court in March this year facing various charges under the country’s Trafficking in Person Act.

 

 

The Zimbabwean suspects aged between 19 and 57 were all released on $300 bail each while a senior Kuwait embassy official who is believed to have facilitated visas for the victims was granted a $500 bail.

 

The Harare court heard that Zimbabwe and Kuwait nationals were allegedly working with their suspected Zimbabwe counterparts to deceive unsuspecting jobseekers.

 

The Zimbabwe Republic Police is expected to do extraterritorial investigations in Kuwait to ascertain the magnitude of the crime in that country.

 

 

A spokesperson for the police in Zimbabwe, senior assistant commissioner Charity Charamba has since advised jobseekers to be warry of suspicious job advertisements offering to take them out of the country.

 

“We would like to urge the public especially the youths not to respond to such advertisements because they will be risking their lives or being slaves in foreign countries,” Charamba was quoted in the State newspaper, The Herald as saying.

And the newspaper, citing officials at the Zimbabwe’s embassy in Kuwait, revealed that about 200 young women were feared stranded in Kuwait.

 

One victim was reportedly battling for life in a Kuwait hospital after she attempted to commit suicide. The victim could not stomach the abuse she was going through at the hands of her so-called employers, according to local media reports.

 

 

However, according to the US Department of State’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report 2015, Zimbabwe is a source, transit and destination country for women, men and children and forced labour. The report said 55 percent of trafficked people worldwide were women and girls while 26 percent are children.

 

In an effort to curb the rising crimes related human trafficking, early this month the government appointed a 13-member Anti-Trafficking Inter-Ministerial committee.

 

The minister of Home Affairs in Zimbabwe, Ignatius Chombo who announced the inter-ministerial committee said the committee would embark on nationwide campaigns to enlighten Zimbabweans on human trafficking and formulating and implementing plan of action against human trafficking.

 

The Anti-Trafficking Inter-Ministerial Committee was established by President Robert Mugabe in 2015 in line with the provisions of the Trafficking in Persons Act which was enacted in June 2014.

 

However, last March, Rindai Chekerwa of the South African based advocacy organisation, Inhuman Trade, told a Hope-Fay Lecture Series, held at the Women’s University in Harare, that: “That there is a law is first step, and we hope that the inter-ministerial committee does what it is supposed to do”.

 

 

The Hope-Fay Lecture Series, held twice a year, is funded by the United States Embassy Public Affairs Section to highlight the issues that women face in Zimbabwe and globally.

 

In her presentation, Chekerwa said due to the big amounts of money involved in human trafficking, only a few cases were reported.

 

 

 “They (human traffickers) don’t have a reason to stop because the laws are not quite exhaustive and the punishment does not fit the crime,” Chekerwa said.

 

A senior official with the US embassy in Zimbabwe, Karen Kelley told participants at the lecture series that Zimbabweans were not only trafficked to countries within the Southern Africa region as in 2014, 22 women were trafficked to Saudi Arabia to work as housemaids.

 

 

However, Kelley said: “Dishearteningly, the woman charged with the recruitment of these women was acquitted.”

 

Kelly said her government was ready to engage and assist the government of Zimbabwe to end trafficking in persons.

 

“In the 21st century, there should be no room at all under God’s sky for the trafficking in human beings; each and every one of us must commit to do everything that we can to end this illicit practice,” she said.