TPDCo Stages Human Trafficking Sensitisation Session

The Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) is inviting stakeholders in the industry to attend a sensitisation session on human trafficking on March 9.

The event will begin at 10:00 a.m. at the Montego Bay Convention Centre in St. James and will also be streamed live on all TPDCo social media platforms.

Executive Training Manager, TPDCo, Ruth Harris, told JIS News that the session will be led by personnel from the National Taskforce Against Trafficking in Persons (NATFATIP).

She said that the training is part of a proactive approach by the Ministry of Tourism to raise awareness about human trafficking.

“So, we are inviting everybody to come out because although we don’t perceive that it’s a real problem in the tourism industry now, we are being proactive. We want people to become aware and understand what to look for to identify human trafficking,” Mrs. Harris pointed out.

She said that the event will be held in keeping with the coronavirus (COVID-19) safety protocols.

In the meantime, Mrs. Harris told JIS News that as of April, TPDCo will be introducing a human trafficking module as part of the Team Jamaica training and certification programme.

“We thought that the best way of bringing awareness to the workers in the industry about human trafficking is to include a session in our Team Jamaica programme because most tourism workers have to go through this training,” she noted.

Human trafficking can be defined as the receipt, harbouring, transportation of a person through various means of threat, use of force, fraud or other deceptive means or even abduction for the exploitation of that person.