Even as the deadline to submit suggestions for a draft on trafficking of persons, its prevention, protection and rehabilitation, is approaching, legal experts, NGOs and anti-trafficking professionals have said it has loopholes.
For the first-of-its-kind bill, proposed by the Union ministry for women & child development, a coalition of experts across Maharashtra and West Bengal will file a suggestion list to the ministry.
Tafteesh, a coalition of more than 11 NGOs, community-based organisations, legal experts, anti-human trafficking researchers and psychologists, has said the bill fails to give key definitions and prepare a comprehensive strategy for rehabilitation and funding.
These professionals who work directly with survivors of human trafficking, have started listing out the faults in the drafted bill and said it does not even define human trafficking. “The bill is silent on the definition of human trafficking. It does not stress if we are talking about labour trafficking or juveniles which will further create a confusion, restricting justice to specific acts and wouldn’t serve the purpose of creating a separate bill,” said advocate Karthik Gupta of Kolkata high court, who spearheads the coalition.
Mr Gupta, who represents a group of 25 legal experts across the country known as Sanjog that is working on suggestions for the draft bill, said rehabilitation is another worrisome aspect. “The appropriate government shall frame schemes and programmes, in such a manner as maybe prescribed, for the purpose of providing rehabilitation, support and after care services necessary for the social integration into mainstream society of the victims and to prevent re-trafficking,” mentions chapter VII of the bill; however, Mr Gupta said the idea of rehabilitation is not well defined.
“The bill mentions schemes and programmes but is rehabilitation only related to those who are “rescued” by the police or other social activists from human trafficking or it would also include people who escaped on their own and would need rehabilitation If rehabilitation means to bring someone back to their original state of security, then what would happen to those who were trafficked due to poverty Such issues aren’t addressed at large,” said Mr Gupta.
Another issue, which is allegedly left unanswered in the bill, is the ‘special agency,’ for investigation. There is no clarity on the members of the committee, timeline for monitoring, responsibilities, and rights of the victim, said Mr Gupta. “If the agency comprises local police officials then the responsibility of investigation needs to be given to someone of the rank of inspector. Do we have enough inspectors for this job ” asked a member of Rescue Foundation of Maharashhtra, professionals, who work directly with survivors of human trafficking.
Fund creation is another aspect of the bill, which is largely defined and not specifically explained. With no proper agency mentioned to take care of the fund creation, activists have alleged that the aftercare services will suffer.
Members of Tafteesh said they would file an extensive brief to the ministry soon by the June 30-deadline.
