30 Mar 2025

Refuge Affairs and Anti Human Trafficking Director, Ms Thobo Letlhang has encouraged councillors to give attention to issues related to human trafficking in their plans. 

When addressing members of the City of Francistown Council in Francistown on Thursday, Ms Letlhang noted that human trafficking was a crime that involved the exploitation of people through force or cohesion, fraud and abuse of power for purposes of forced labour or other forms of slavery.

 Ms Letlhang said human trafficking was a global issue that affected millions of people worldwide and it generated billions of money in profits for traffickers each year. 

She therefore highlighted the importance of councillors in raising awareness and to mainstream human trafficking in their community structures and at district level, as the issue needed to be tackled by all. 

“We are appealing to you that when you do your plans, mainstream these issues, look at them from a multi sectoral perspective. 

Let’s all of us belonging to the campaign to counter human trafficking” said Ms Letlhang. 

Ms Letlhang highlighted that everyone could be trafficked regardless of any status. 

She further in most of human trafficking cases, which were tried before different courts in Botswana, the victims were trafficked for labour exploitation.

Ms Letlhage said Botswana was categorised as a transit for victims of human trafficking, rather than a source and destination country for victims. 

Furthermore, Ms Letlhang told the councillors that the Ministry of Justice and Correctional Services was currently developing an Ethical Recruitment Policy, which would be used to tackle human trafficking issues. 

She said social media usage had interfered a lot when it came to human trafficking matters leading to difficulties in having trail of how people were recruited, and as such, the policy would speak directly to issues of recruitment and close such gaps. 

Ms Letlhang said the policy was expected to address issues of licensing recruitment agencies, compliance, and oversight measures and also enhance public awareness on human trafficking.  

For his part, Detective Senior Superintendent Selebatso Mokgosi, revealed that in Botswana, human trafficking was confused with ritual killings, adding that these shows that there was a lot to be done in educating people about human trafficking. 

Detective Mokgosi said up to now, there are 150 cases of missing persons in Botswana, which encompassed children, men and women of different ages. ENDS