Licensed recruiters, placement agents not involved in human trafficking — ARLPAN

What can you say about Nigerian youths being sold into slavery abroad under the guise of foreign employment?

Well, it is true that there is a human trafficking racket that sells gullible Nigerians into slavery but this should not be the case because as part of strategies to reduce irregular labour migration whilst at the same time promote regular migration due to the fact that every individual has the right to migrate and settle anywhere in the world, there are regular accredited channels that should be followed. Many Nigerians falls into the hand of illegal and unlicensed recruiters and have become prey in the hands of sex slave recruiters.

The Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment is ahead of this as it created a Labour Migration Desk to address the associated problems with the movement of skilled and low skilled persons within and outside the country by ensuring that there are employment opportunities for Nigerians to work legally abroad without fear of molestation, exploitation or any form of inhuman treatment or being subjected to unfair labour practices. And that is where we come in, that is our duty.

What is the cause of human trafficking?

I will first like to say that human trafficking is a vice that we all must fight against. It is majorly caused by patronising illegal and unlicensed agents who are only concerned with profit and lure Nigerians abroad with false job offers to sell them into slavery. For them, it is basically about financial gains, they do not care about the lives of those who fall victim of their dubious offers.

Your members are being alleged of being responsible for human trafficking, what can you say about this?

I, Rex Bamidele Jacob, the current elected president of Association of Recruiters, Licensed Placement Agents of Nigeria (ARLPAN), can authoritatively tell you that my members are not involved in this. I am also into international employment and recruitment and I am not a novice, I hold a Bsc in Economics from the University of Portharcourt, Rivers state. So I know how to monitor my people and we all have the same mind of doing our work legally.

ARLPAN as an association and umbrella body of Private Employment Agencies, PEAs, in collaboration with Human Capital Providers Association of Nigeria (HuCaPan) frowns at any act capable of circumventing the provisions of our laws and would not condone any act that could bring the name of the body into disrepute. Our members are law-abiding and are faithful to the implementation of the Code of Conduct for Private Employment Agencies in Nigeria jointly developed by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, International Labour Organisation, ILO and other social partners,

In fact, the Labour Ministry and HuCaPAN have cleared us that we, the Licensed Private Employment Agencies are not involved in human trafficking

That means your organization is approved by government?

You can say that because we are all known to government except the fraudulent ones that do not have the confidence to register because they are not involved in legitimate recruitment. We are registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission and have joined also HuCapan. We were all introduced as an association to majority of government agencies.

How many registered members do you have?

We have membership strength of 35.

Do you have sanction for erring members?

Yes. For any member who defaults in any manner, there are processes of ensuring discipline because we have a disciplinary department and a constitution that guides our operations.

How can people identity genuine members of your association?

Every genuine member is issued a membership certificate every year and this could be withdrawn at anytime if such a member is found to be involved questionable transactions within the period.

What are you as an organisation doing to stop the act of human trafficking?

By consistent public enlightenment through print and the social media; we are doing all we can to encourage people only to patronise only registered recruiters.

How do you regulate your membership to stop them from unethical practices?

We engage them in regular training and seminars organised by international bodies who train on the effect of unethical recruitment and we ensure we monitor each other’s activities, members know they are being watched and all their activities scrutinised; we also ensure we help each other so that members will not deal with fraudsters and criminally minded people.

How can people avoid wrong channels of recruitment?

We advise people to always demand to see the labour license of their international job facilitators and thereafter do a confirmation from HuCapan secretariat or directly from our Association; ARLPAN. Our phone numbers are on our pages and are available at all hours.

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