Cape Town - Lured to big cities by the promise of employment, people from rural communities often fall prey to unscrupulous employers.
“We are faced with many social challenges, extreme poverty and massive unemployment,” said the speaker of the Beaufort West Municipality, Euna Wentzel.
“There is simply nothing here, no jobs, and it is like that in most rural towns.
“People want to change their lives and they see job opportunities as the only way to better themselves. They become vulnerable to abuse and exploitation, not only the youths, but the older people too. Out of desperation, they open their lives up to any sort of crime and end up being transported like animals from one place to another.”
A report compiled by the US Bureau of International Labour Affairs found that in South Africa there were still barriers to enforcing laws preventing the exploitation and trafficking of people.
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The 2015 Child Labour and Forced Labour report said South Africa’s Prevention and Combating of Trafficking in Persons Act, signed into law in 2013, “increased the penalty for forced labour to a fine of plus R100 000 and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment”.
Despite this, the report noted that children were “engaged in child labour, including harvesting fruit, unspecified work in the forestry and food sectors, domestic work, scavenging garbage dumps for food and household goods, vending and begging on the streets, used by gangs to traffic drugs, burgle and produce illegal alcohol, and commercial sexual exploitation”.
Also the government did “not collect data on child labour or make criminal enforcement data publicly available,” the report added.
Another report, by Activists Networking Against the Exploitation of Children (Anex) found domestic workers did not speak out because they felt a need to.