Building safe communities can prevent distress migration. If communities are strengthened and their confidence on law enforcement system increased they can thwart the twin danger of exploitation and trafficking. It is seen that a large section of migrant population is duped in western Odisha.
These were some of issues which came up for discussion during a media sensitisation workshop held here on Thursday, organised by the International Justice Mission (IJM).
"All it can be done is Government, civil society and communities should come forward to equip people with appropriate policies and procedures on which there can be no escape plan for violators who always take advantage of gaps in law enforcing mechanism," said IJM campaigner Neenu Thomas.
While presenting the theme of the workshop, Nithaniyal Nag of the IJM stressed the need to increase role of State Government that alone will ensure protection, education, awareness and livelihood opportunities for victim labourers and build safe communities.
"Though the Government is forthcoming at policy level but grassroots enforcing mechanism is very weak which is why the labour contractors and traffickers are having an upper hand in many such cases," reacted Dilip Das, an activist of Kalahandi.
Since 2010, the IJM has rescued 5,220 migrants with the help of local partners, who were trapped for trafficking and bonded labour. They have been rehabilitated on six domains like safety and protection, economic empowerment, communuty involvement, education, mental wellbeing, health hazards and sex workers plights etc.
The IJM is working in seven districts of Odisha like Balangir, Sonepur, Boudh, Kalahandi, Nuapara, Baragarh and Nabarangpur.
Anuja Nayak, Manager Partner Relations, said for the first time, the Government has considered to act strong against all kinds of trafficking like labour and sex etc in the "Trafficking of Persons Bill 2018" and some strong measures have been incorporated in Bonded Labour Rehabilitation Scheme (BLR CSS 2016).