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Minister Mupfumira

Felex Share Senior Reporter
Government has moved in to empower 113 victims of human trafficking and is pooling resources for them to start businesses, a Cabinet Minister has said.

Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Prisca Mupfumira, said the intervention plans were in line with the Trafficking in Persons National Action plan (NAPLAC), which was recently launched by Government.

The action plan is anchored on four pillars — prosecution, prevention, protection and partnership — and runs from 2016 to 2018.

Minister Mupfumira’s portfolio is mandated with providing the victims with shelter that is safe and secure from traffickers, offer counselling and psycho-social support.

She said the empowerment programme would be supported by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

“After repatriating the women and safely reuniting them with their families, the ministry realised that without providing interventions to empower them to sustain themselves, the women, are likely to fall into the same predicament due to desperation,” she said.

“We have held meetings with IOM where it was emphasised that resources should be pooled together for the intervention programme to make an impact. We agreed that a fragmented approach will defeat efforts that have been made so far.”

Minister Mupfumira said her ministry and IOM officials were now working on a framework to achieve set targets.

The two parties, she said, would also rope in other stakeholders from Government, the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Foreign Affairs and civil society to come up with a holistic approach to assist the victims.

“There is a technical committee in place that is mandated with formulating clear cut standard operating procedures and terms of reference for all stakeholders in an effort to obtain operational efficiency as well as avoiding overlaps and duplication of efforts in the envisaged interventions,” she said.

“It is also expected to come up with time framed roadmap of activities to mitigate the plight of the identified victims. The team is expected to explore channels of tapping into already existing structures within Government and the identified supporting partners.”

She said most of the victims were keen to embark on income generating projects that would empower them financially.

Said Minister Mupfumira: “Government has made a commitment to repatriate its nationals who have fallen prey to unscrupulous human traffickers. So far a total of 113 women have been repatriated from Kuwait after they were misled into believing that they would be offered lucrative job opportunities in the oil rich Arab country.”

Most of the women end up being beaten up, sexually abused, working for very long hours, given low wages and sometimes not being paid at all.

Government has since written to the government of Kuwait seeking an immediate ban on the issuance of Article 20 visas to Zimbabweans to prevent more people from being trafficked to the Middle East country.

Under Kuwaiti immigration laws, an Article 20 visa restricts one to being a domestic worker.