Rise in forced labour expected amid the Covid-19 economic crisis
Against the backdrop of South Africa’s poor economic prognosis, the practice of forced labour is set to rise in the coming months and years. The Covid-19 pandemic has only made matters worse.
The covert and ever-changing nature of the crime makes it hard to quantify and extremely tricky to detect. Even though credible statistics are in short supply, the recruitment practices of traffickers seem to follow a fairly similar pattern. Recruiters prey on vulnerability, and in South Africa this often presents as economic desperation, low levels of education and poor implementation of migrant rights.
Forced labourers are often found in the agricultural sector, specifically on fruit and vegetable farms as well as on fishing boats. South African and foreign African women are increasingly forced into domestic servitude situations where they do unpaid housework, are unable to leave the property unsupervised, and in the case of foreign nationals, their documents are withheld. To a lesser extent, foreign shop owners have been found to force co-nationals into working in their shops with no pay.
In the long run, prevention is the best cure. Prevention for a crime of this nature is best addressed through diminishing the structural drivers or root causes that make people vulnerable to being coerced by traffickers. These include poverty, barriers to education, slow economic growth and structural unemployment.
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