According to a Govern-ment Information Agency (GINA) press release the Task Force on Thursday said it seriously questions the authenticity of the US State Department’s report based on its heavy reliance on second-hand data. “It appears that the architects of the US Report are less willing to use information from official sources and prefer to base their reports mainly on “other sources”, some of which may have strong anti-government agendas and have already demonstrated their partiality to embellish issues for political reasons,” the Task Force said.
It said too the methodological section of the Report does not provide practical indicators by which the Guyana government can assess its own anti-trafficking efforts, relative to the criteria by which they are evaluated. Also, the extensive grass roots network that the government has developed to tackle this scourge has given no indication that it was a problem as described in the US Report.
In fact, the Task Force said, there were only two reports of persons presumed to be trafficked in 2008 and two persons were charged for the offence in early January 2009. In a press release the Task Force said in its 2008 report that after thorough investigations of the problem in Guyana it was difficult to corroborate the findings in the US Report. It contended that the US Report does not tally with first-hand experience of personnel from government agencies that have been at the forefront of the anti-trafficking fight neither does it correspond with the experience of focal points from several respected NGOs.
The Task Force report also said “a number of worthwhile initiatives … are obviously omitted in the US Report” including the bilateral agreements Guyana initiated with neighbouring countries such as Suriname and Brazil to respond to human trafficking. These agreements focused on improving legal, judicial and law enforcement cooperation in the fight against TIP and other forms of transnational organized crime.
In this regard, Guyana will continue to improve its performance in responding to allegations of trafficking, the release said. Already, expanded prevention measures coupled with heightened activity from law enforcement agencies, as well as their vigorous enforcement and sensitization measures at the national level have made it difficult for human traffickers to carry out this practice.
