By MOFOR SAMUEL CHE
Mofor Samuel |
Cameroonians are still
to come to terms with hair splitting stories of victims of human trafficking
enticed and deceived into believing that a brighter future awaits them in the
Middle East and Kuwait in particular. Young Cameroonian girls, most of them
graduates particularly in the health sector, were lured into believing that
golden employment opportunities, comfortable financial packages and other
non-financial incentives would characterize their working condition.
Messages like this one
were often posted on poles and strategic points or ran like strips on
television stations: If you are
between 18 and 24 years old, like to work in the Middle East, and want to get
between $6,000,000 and $20,000,000 in a year, pay attention. We are offering: A
round-trip place ticket; A work visa to Kuwait, Dubai, UAE etc; Housing; Transport
allowance; Advice on the law; Contract for 24 month’s work etc. Such
messages often end with contact numbers for those interested to call for
enquiries. Several families were forced to sell their only landed property to
fulfill the financial conditions to enable their daughters to fly to the Middle
East as they saw gold waiting for them at the end of the tunnel. Some even went
for loans with the sure hope that once their children get settled down in their
new destination, the loans will be taken care of. Not until CRTV’s prime time
programme Cameroon Calling unleashed
the bomb shell of the ordeals that victims went through once they touched down
in their respective destinations. Victims come face to face with the grim
reality that they were being trafficked and have to dance to the music of their
owners. These young women were forced to
work excruciating long hours with no money and no chance to rest.
Victims of trafficking are often dumped in unsafe or illegal
living and working conditions. Far from home, their personal identities,
passports, birth certificates, identification cards, and address books are also
being confiscated once they arrive at their destinations. Next, they endure
physical abuse, ranging from punching, slapping, choking, pulling hair, body
kicking, forced sex, and often involving the use of dangerous weapons such as
guns or knives. The victims repeatedly suffer emotional and psychological abuse
— i.e., their captors will threaten to hurt their families back home, threaten
to turn them over to police or immigration officers, destroy their personal
property, humiliate and demean them, or force them to commit illegal acts.
They are not allowed to have outside contact with family and
friends. They are forbidden to go outside, to make phone calls, write letters,
or see the light of day, except perhaps through a dimmed barred window. Many of
them sleep on the floor, on the corridor sometimes with animals.
The major reasons
for the persistence of the ugly phenomenon of human trafficking in Cameroon
include pervasive poverty in the society especially at the family level, the
frightening problem of unemployment among the population particularly the
youths, and ignorance of the prospective victims of human trafficking about
their fate in foreign countries. Some other reasons include bad leadership that
has failed to improve the welfare of the citizens thereby resulting in mass
disillusionment and the urge by many citizens to leave the country in search
for green pastures; the abuse of traditional method of fostering children and
get-rich-quick syndrome in contemporary Cameroonian society.
The escalation of
the incidence of human trafficking in Cameroon began in 1990s as a result of
decline in Cameroon’s economy which gave rise to pervasive poverty at family
level; frightening unemployment; deterioration of social infrastructure; low
wages, soaring prices of goods and consequent social misery among the population.
This situation provoked the urge amongst many Cameroonians to immigrate to
foreign countries to seek better life and favourable economic opportunities.
Perhaps at this
juncture, it is necessary to understand what human trafficking is all about
before delving into its consequences.
Simply put, it is the recruitment, transportation,
transfer labour receipt of a person through deception, force, coercion to a
strange place within or across borders for the purpose of retraining such a
person in a situation of enslavement, servitude or debt bondage. The effects of human trafficking paint a very
negative image of Cameroon internationally. Some of the negative consequences of human trafficking on the
country’s image are:
-
It creates the erroneous
impression that the country is incapable of providing for her citizens
especially in terms of employment and social welfare, hence the exodus of her
able-bodied youths to foreign countries
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It exposes some
Cameroonians to all forms of inhuman treatment in foreign countries. These
include physical assault, rape, detention and in some extreme cases execution.
Many are also known to be languishing in prisons in some countries of the world
due to the misadventure associated with human trafficking.
-
It gives rise to
frequent deportation of Cameroonians from foreign countries.
-
It portrays Cameroon
as a country in throes of political and economic crises.
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Brain drain which
is another dimension of ‘human trafficking’ deprives the country of the high-skilled
manpower needed for rapid national development. Ibekwe (2010) summarized the
negative effects of brain drain on developing countries, including Cameroon as
follows: “Brain drain in developing countries has financial,
institutional and social costs: little return from their investments in higher
education; increasing dependency on foreign expertise due to dwindling
professional sector; diminishing ability of several developing countries to
offer basic health care services to their subjects; widening gap in science and
technology between the richer and poor countries; crumbling middle class
population; failing tax system and disappearance of jobs and society”.
On the other hand, Cameroon’s
health care and education sectors have been in deplorable state partly due to
inadequate number of experts as a result of the effect of brain drain.” In the
case of the health sector, Cameroon needs some 36,000 health workers to meet up her demand in
human resources for health. In fact training and sustaining health workers in
Cameroon just like many sub-Saharan African countries is a major problem
begging for an immediate solution. According to World Health Report (2006), a
minimum of 2.3 health workers per 1000 population is required to meet the
health needs of the MDGs.
The inadequate funding of health systems in Africa (including
Cameroon) has resulted in unsafe and unsupported working conditions for health
professionals. Much
of the current HRH crisis in Cameroon can be attributed to low government
spending on health – a mere 4.6% and 5.1% of the gross domestic product in 2000
and 2012.
The lack of
basic equipments and regular drugs combined with many districts having less
than $1 per person per year to spend on health care services reduces the
ability of health workers to carry out their jobs effectively.
Inadequate retention, management and training
characterized by low salaries, limited opportunities for career development and
the lack of support and supervision are all contributory factors to brain drain
in Cameroon as far as the health sector is concerned. On the other hand, most
health workers are trained for individual performance and not for the
team-based approach on the recognition that health is produced with others,
whether they are professionals from different backgrounds or as members of the
community. Team work with other sectors or communities are capabilities or
skills developed during pre-graduate training. They are exceptionally addressed
in most graduate health courses. The reductionist and wrong perspective that
human resources for health are only those involved in curative, disease-centred
and care institution still persists.
Government should allocate sufficient internal
resources to health in order to ensure the essentials and priorities
established. Furthermore, since human resources require new capacities, the
health work force needs to address new social, environmental and sanitary
problems with an inter disciplinary approach and therefore, new competence and
skills have to be developed to address situations encountered in the areas they
serve.
Policy decision makers and human resources training
institutions must work hand in hand in planning for the health system’s needs. The training in health care
that does take place in Cameroon is also seldom matched with employment needs.
In 2011, for example, severe staff shortages in the fields of mental health,
ophthalmology and anesthesia–resuscitation were known to exist, but almost all
health science students at training schools in Cameroon were intending to work
as nursing aids, state registered nurses or laboratory technicians in other
fields of medicine. The development of human resources for health, both at the
undergraduate and post graduate levels needs to respond to the country’s health
system’s needs and demand joint work between State and University. Health
workers need to develop competence and skills for health promotion and
prevention and the incentives for applying them as required.
Continuing in-service education is crucial for ensuring
quality response from the health work force, keeping pace with scientific
advances as well as with changes and the complexity of the reality. Health
workers with an enabling environment for their development and reflection on
their own practices within an interdisciplinary team will be enriched in the
interpretation of problems to be addressed and will be amenable to design more
effective strategies for their solution.
Last but not the least, leadership and
accountability as well as decentralization within the health sector must not
only be a slogan. Cameroonians from all walks of life should be able to hold
the government and policy makers to account on health sector spending and
ensuring that human resources are prioritized.
The coordinated use of crime prevention and law
enforcement resources to stamp out human trafficking and to liberate the
vulnerable especially young female adults and adolescents, from exploitation,
as well as to ensure their rehabilitation and effective reintegration into the
society, the prosecution of barons or
networks involved in this dehumanizing activity and collaboration with relevant
national and international agencies is much welcomed at this point in time.
However additional measures such as improving the
working environment in the health sector will enable Cameroon to stem the tide
and protect its citizens particularly the youths from the scourge of human
trafficking. These youths will then stay and contribute to development at home.