VOI - Voice of Indonesia | RRI - Radio Republik Indonesia

VOINews, Jakarta - The Putussibau Immigration Office in Kapuas Hulu District, West Kalimantan Province, has established a foster village in Badau Subdistrict near the Indonesia-Malaysia border area to help prevent human trafficking cases.

"We conduct public awareness campaigns for residents of the foster village to enable them to comprehend the overseas employment procedures and immigration regulations," said Head of the Technology, Information, Intelligence, and Law Enforcement Unit at the office Joenari Anthony Marpaung.

Marpaung also appealed to the villagers to support the human trafficking prevention efforts.

"We hope the villagers will actively join the human trafficking prevention efforts," he said here Sunday.

Meanwhile, Head of the Kapuas Hulu Manpower, Industry, and Transmigration Office Elisabet Roslin said the foster village program would help village head and personnel understand immigration procedures for migrant workers.

Therefore, both village authority and villagers could actively join the human trafficking prevention efforts, Roslin said.

In helping crack down on human traffickers, Hendra Wijaya, a police officer who joined the Putussibau Immigration's Foster Village Program, called on the villagers to assist the police duty of law enforcement.

"We hope the villagers are willing to file reports if they find human trafficking cases in their neighborhood area," he added.

It is noted that human trafficking has become a serious issue at regional and global levels.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime's (UNODC's) Global Report on Human Trafficking (2022), the ratio of the number of human trafficking victims in the East Asia region, including Indonesia, had reached 0.34 victims per 100 thousand population in 2020.

The UNODC data refers to the number of victims officially detected and recorded by the authorities, so the actual figure could, in fact, be higher.

According to teh UNODC, the East Asian countries included Indonesia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Mongolia, Japan, and China. Meanwhile, the Pacific countries, include Fiji, Palau, Tonga, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Micronesia, Australia, and New Zealand.

The report showed that most of the human trafficking victims in the East Asian and Pacific region, reaching 54 percent, are exploited for forced labor, while 38 percent were sexually exploited, including the practice of prostitution, and the other eight percent were exploited in other forms, with victims ranging from children to adults. (Antaranews)