Government will be moving to mount a comprehensive response to human trafficking through more prosecutions and improved assistance for victims, according to Junior Social Protection Minister Simona Broomes.
For a third consecutive year, the US State Department’s annual trafficking report has placed Guyana on the Tier 2 Watch List, which is for countries where governments do not fully comply with the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act’s minimum standards, but are making significant efforts to bring themselves into. The latest report indicated that Guyana was granted a waiver from an otherwise required downgrade to Tier 3 because government has a written plan that, if implemented, would constitute making significant efforts to bring itself into compliance with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking, and it has committed to devoting sufficient resources to implement that plan.
Broomes told Stabroek News that the new government could have inherited a worse situation, although the current position is not a good one and Guyana should not have been there. “We cannot change the past but definitely what we can do is to change the
