Child trafficking on increase with no solution in horizon

Mwanza. Fifteen-year-old Naomi Juma was brought from her home in Nyigogo Village in Magu District in 2013 to work as a house girl in Mwanza city.

Initially her employer Sarah Ezekiel residing in Kitangiri B had promised to pay her a salary of Sh20,000 per month.

The employer, however, says Naomi, breached their agreement, saying that she would look after the young girl like her own child.

She further told The Citizen that she hadn’t been paid for three years and was rescued by police from what she described as cruelty.

“My employer started beating me and sometimes denied me food,” she said.

Naomi’s plight portrays life of many girls under the age of 18 who work as house helps across the country.

Her employer denied her any interaction with neighbours, who soon realised that she was being abused by her employer, a single parent of one child. “The neighbours ended up reporting the matter to the police after they saw how I had sustained injuries from the beatings,” she said.

In addition, she never communicated with her parents since she arrived in the city and whenever she requested to talk to them her employer would refuse to comply.

The acting officer in-charge of the gender desk, Mr Joel Nyambuja, said that Naomi suffered silently as she had no idea where to go for help.

He said there are increasing cases of children being trafficked to Mwanza City where they are pushed into forced labour and sexual exploitation.

“Many girls are trafficked to the city for domestic servitude. Others who flee abusive employers end up being forced into prostitution,” he said.

The police arrested Sarah who claimed she had been sending Naomi’s salary to her parents in Magu.

“I agreed with Naomi’s parents that I would be sending them Naomi’s salary and fulfilled that promise,” she said.

Labour officer for Mwanza Region Goodluck Luginga said many children are tricked into becoming domestic workers while others are forced by their parents to work and earn money for the family. Boys, he noted, are usually taken to farms, mines or to work on fishing boats.

The official noted that many domestic workers are mistreated by their employers. He said a large number of house girls are paid at most Sh15,000 per month despite the fact that the minimum wage for domestic workers is Sh40,000.

“And indeed,” he says, “lucky are those who receive the paltry wages from their employers as most of them are not paid anything.”

According to him girls are more vulnerable as they run the risk of being sexually harassed by male members of the households they work for.

He said that the government should provide guidelines on child labour interventions and ensure that they are applied in order to curb the vice.

“To prevent the exploitation and trafficking, teachers, police and labour inspectors should follow up with parents to determine why children are not going to school,” he said.

He urged the government to effectively utilise the Anti-trafficking in Persons Act to prosecute and punish traffickers. He called for the implementation of national procedures for victim protection.

He called for the establishment of trafficking-specific data collection systems for use by the police and courts, as well as providing additional training to law enforcement personnel.

He said local government leaders in villages are reluctant to report traffickers adding that many parents are of no help in investigating the trafficking of their children.

A report published recently by the Tanzania Media Women Association (Tamwa) shows that out of 730 house girls, 60 per cent had been sexually abused at their workplaces.

The director for Wote Sawa, a young domestic workers organisation here, Ms Angela Benedicto, says over 80 per cent of domestic workers here are girls below the age of 17.

A survey carried by Wote Sawa out in April in Mwanza City, in Ngara and Kanazi suburbs, it revealed that 30 per cent of the domestic workers are denied liberties like permission to worship, medical treatment and clothing.

In addition, the survey indicates that the young workers wish they could enrol in school or learn a skill like tailoring so that the can be financially independent.

She revealed that her organisation rescued 565 young domestic workers during the month of April.

She added that law enforcement and social welfare officials sometimes confused human trafficking with smuggling.