Revoke licences from businesses involved in TIP – Minister

The Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan on Tuesday said he believes that business licences should be revoked from hotel owners who are found guilty of Trafficking In Persons (TIP).
He made the statement while addressing the opening ceremony of a three-day workshop to combat TIP.
According to Ramjattan, countries with TIP suspects should share such information with other countries when those persons are travelling so as to ensure the receiving country is alert to detect any unlawful acts in this regard.
“Hitting the networks hard, getting the information as to who are some of the suspects, let’s say in Trinidad or Tobago that are the culprits, and forewarning us when they are coming to Guyana, red flagging, all of these are very important things that we would like to see happen so that we can nab them a nip in the bud, long before they start their operations in any country,” he said.
He added that an important aspect of combating TIP would be revoking licences from hotel owners when found guilty of condoning the act.
“We too must not only do damage to the profit-making, even if it comes to that taking away their hotel licences, when you get the evidence or not granting hotel licences and business licences and so on,” he posited.
Ramjattan said that although persons may argue that those jobs and businesses create employment, the repugnance of that type of employment is important to the Government, which wants to be civil.
He noted that because TIP is such a large-scale business, a collaborative effort is needed to tackle the issue. “The profits are also utilised to corrupt law enforcement and also because of the vulnerabilities of systems not in place, sometimes even further afield prosecutorial, judicial, magisterial, all those and we have to start,” the Minister noted.
The three-day Regional Thematic Meeting which kicked off on Tuesday at the Princess Hotel will focus on Trafficking in Human Beings (THB) and Smuggling of Migrants (SoM) in the African, Caribbean and Pacific States (ACP).
In 2010, the ACP group of States and the European Union (EU) launched the ACP-EU dialogue on migration and development.
The objective is to provide a dedicated platform for Caribbean stakeholders and beneficiaries to exchange information and experiences on policy implementation with regards to counter-trafficking and counter-smuggling of migrants and identify region-relevant practices among others.
At the conclusion of the meeting, a report on Trafficking in Human Beings and Smuggling of Migrants will be produced with the aim of providing an overview of the achievements of the action in the specific region.
Earlier this month it was revealed that some 243 persons were trafficked locally.
“There were 243 victims and on one occasion they [officials] went to a club…39 were found in small rooms, obviously the presumption [was] that they were being trafficked, and of course, alleged victims under 18, you have 11 out of that 243. The suspects involved, if I may breach some confidentiality of the police here, you have 57 of them,” the Minister divulged during a previous event.
He stated that total charges for last year amounted to 36 and all of the other cases are presently ongoing.
“Actual TIP charges as a result of those reports we have 23…the numbers of individuals charged for trafficking offences, of course there are some other offences like illegal entry into the country and so on, but actual TIP charges we had 10. For the year 2018 too we had two convictions for TIP; previous years we had zero and one.”
He explained that the regions where these cases were found are from Region Four, specifically Georgetown; Region Seven (Cuyuni-Mazaruni) and Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo).