Human Trafficking

According to the US Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, Malaysia has been placed on Tier 2 Watch List for four consecutive years. In view of this, our government needs to be extra careful of the risk - if we are not moving up to Tier 1 or of being downgraded to Tier 3. Malaysia’s stagnant Tier 2 rankings from 2010 to 2014 clearly show that we have not made any improvement in the anti-human trafficking effort during that period of time. Malaysia’ image will definitely take another beating from the possible Tier 3 downgrade if we are not careful this time around. As we have been placed on Tier 3 ranking before in 2007 and 2009, the possibility of a downgrade is imminent if history is anything to go by. As such, I am of the opinion that we need to step up the effort in anti-human trafficking and smuggling for the sake of protecting the safety of our people and improving our image internationally. Fighting human trafficking is a difficult task. The government needs to beef up its effort to prevent human trafficking syndicates from using our geographically strategic location as a transit point for trafficking activities. Malaysia-Indonesia border is a hot transit point for trafficking through which illegal immigrants are usually smuggled into a third country such as Australia. We have, just not long ago, busted a human smuggling activity coming from Afghanistan which was using Malaysia as a transit country to smuggle people into Australia. As such, intra-regional co-operation and intelligence exchange must be enhanced to effectively tackle the human trafficking problem. Increasing effort from the government is needed but it is not enough. In view of the trans-border nature of human trafficking and smuggling, it calls for more cooperation from all members of the public to helping the government in better tackling the issue. It is an established fact that most of the victims of human trafficking are women and children. As such, domestically we can prevent such tragedy from happening by organising more awareness campaigns to instill awareness among women on the danger of human trafficking. On that note, effective anti-human trafficking and smuggling is dependent on and could be achieved through closer private and public sector co-operation