S'pore disputes human trafficking report by US

The Singapore Inter-agency Taskforce on Trafficking in Persons (TIP) released a statement saying the US Department of State’s report did not take into account Singapore’s laws or its domestic context, which is different from the US.

The Republic was placed in “Tier 2” of a four-tier category system in which “Tier 1” represents countries “whose governments fully comply with minimum international standards of protecting migrant workers from forced labour or other forms of trafficking in people”.

Tier 2 countries do not fully comply with minimum international standards but are making “significant efforts” in the area.

The US report, released earlier this month, charged among other things that child sex trafficking occurs in Singapore.

It also said that the Singapore government investigated more than 400 leads, “yet it only substantiated 21 trafficking cases during the year”.

The taskforce said it will address the “inaccuracies” in a subsequent statement. Set up in 2010 and co-chaired by the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Manpower, it said the report “generally captured Singapore’s key TIP efforts” and stressed that the government remains fully committed in fighting human trafficking.

The statement added that last year a National Plan of Action was launched to combat human trafficking. It included securing a budget to fund TIP initiatives, strengthening inter-agency coordination and increasing awareness of trafficking among government officials, workers and the public.

The taskforce has also boosted the number of frontline officers and stepped up training.

It called on the US to adopt “a more objective methodology to report countries’ TIP efforts in future editions of the TIP report”.

Last year, the taskforce also issued a rebuttal on the 2012 report. It met US Embassy representatives in Singapore to discuss alleged inaccuracies.

The yearly report has placed Singapore in “Tier 2” since 2011. In 2010, it was placed on a human trafficking watch list for the first time, alongside countries such as Bangladesh, China and India.

At the time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the report “puzzling” as it did not satisfactorily explain how it had arrived at its conclusions.