Parliament of Sierra Leone has probed into the activities of National Task Force for Human Trafficking Secretariat, at the State Hall, in Parliament.
This Secretariat has the mandate under the Anti-human trafficking and Migrant Act 2022 to ensure that trafficking issues are investigated, victims identified, and cases prosecuted to deter future reoccurrences.
According to the Executive Director, Dehange Skakai, very recently, they’d trained a number of authorities on referral mechanisms to detect crimes related to trafficking, to ensure that traffic victims are identified and protected through referrals mechanisms.
He said at Jendema, earlier, the immigration department was able to identify a group of young women, totaling 19 in number who were about to move into Liberia without proper documentation but there was a suspension that if they moved beyond that place they could be held as victims of trafficking.
He maintained that they were intercepted and through the referral mechanisms 19 of them were referred to the Sierra Leone Transnational Organize Crime Unit for further investigation.
He said also that quite recently through the effort of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Corporation there was also a National task force with the help of authorities in Mali who intercepted about 11 young children through a Sierra Leone border.
They were handed over to the Sierra Leone Embassy in Guinea. These children were repatriated to Sierra Leone and were handed over to the Ministry of Social Welfare and are now on temporary care centre.
The Family Support Unit of the Sierra Leone police is investigating the matter.
He said the money that was allocated to these repatriates was not enough to do their work, a reason they have asked parliament to help them increase their allocation for 2024 fiscal year.