Former Interpol Ambassador, Strategy and Security expert Andy Mashaile said South African law enforcement agencies will have to double their efforts in devising a crime prevention strategy to address the growing concern of human trafficking in Lombardy East, Gauteng and across the country.
This follows the discovery of more than 30 Ethiopian nationals in a house in Lombardy East on Wednesday, where it’s suspected they were kept against their will.
Gauteng police said they’re investigating a case of suspected human trafficking and looking for the owner of a house.
Police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Mavela Masondo said that SAPS members found a group of victims aged between 14 to 25 years old, some half-naked, in a house after they broke down the door and the windows of the house.
But Mashaile, who was speaking on YouFM Newshour, said that this is not an isolated incident, where police found a group of foreign nationals in the country held against their will and how they entered the country is investigated.
“These incidents expose our weaknesses as a system, and it also exposes us to the reality that when you’re not intelligence driven you will always come out second best against criminals.
“What I am suggesting here is that unsuspecting ordinary citizens like you and I should be deployed in that area to do “bodying and logging” an intelligence operation to collect information and debrief the police,” said Mashaile.
Furthermore, Mashaile said that there are many independent organisations and security companies that can be robbed in to work with the police to combat human trafficking
“I am suggesting that there by Rustenburg or Mahikeng, police can work with these advanced security companies because they know better because they often respond to alarms in area A or area B.
“You’ll agree with me that when we have a functional relationship with them, when the SAPS respect these security companies, they’ll fill in the role of the community-based intelligence operative, they would report any suspicious incidents happening in the communities they are deployed in,” explained Mashaile.
Police preliminary investigation revealed that the suspected captors attempted to extort money from the victim’s families, who some had left behind in Ethiopia.
