'Legal centre submits 32 reports on suspected human trafficking to PSD unit'

AMMAN — Jordan-based Tamkeen for Legal Aid and Human Rights has submitted 32 complaints by guest workers to the Public Security Department’s (PSD) anti-human trafficking unit since the beginning of 2015. 

The complaints include restriction of freedom, passport confiscation, not getting paid, food deprivation and preventing workers from contacting their families, according to Tamkeen.

They also include beating charges, verbal abuse, deprivation of healthcare, lengthy work hours and being forced to work at more than one place, in addition to sexual assaults. 

The complainants are 89 male and female workers, of whom 46 are Indians, 11 are Sri Lankans, 10 are Indonesians, seven are from the Philippines, another seven are Bangladeshis, five are Kenyans, two are Ethiopians and one is Egyptian. 

The UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking In Persons defines trafficking in persons as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. 

Tamkeen’s director, Linda Kalash, said human trafficking is a complex issue, and it is related to political, economic and social factors, pointing out that most of the victims are women. 

Kalash said the centre has received several migrant workers whose rights are violated, noting that most workers are misled before they arrive in Jordan, regarding work conditions. 

The contracts they sign while they are in their countries become different after they arrive in Jordan, she added.