Examples of Workplace Hazards Faced by the Trafficking Victim

Every workplace poses the risk of accidents to a certain degree, and this is something that is truer in the case of hazardous jobs.  It is the basic duty of the employer to ensure that the risks are brought down to a minimum, in accordance to the situation and the level of hazard posed by the job description.  The scenario, however, becomes much different when the victims of trafficking come into the picture. These people are lured into immigrating to other countries by individuals or organisations pretending to offer lucrative jobs, usually in the hospitality and entertainment industry.  Some of them are also given the offer of working as interpreters. Reality, however, intervenes in its ugly form. Most of the trafficked population are sold or forced into jobs as unskilled labourers in the most dangerous workplaces like construction sites and explosives factories, as well as sweatshops.

Why are Hazards Not Eliminated?

The abovementioned workplaces are highly dangerous in themselves, either in terms of instant hazards or long term ones, or both. While every unskilled worker in these jobs has to work with a degree of risk in mind, the situation is direr in the case of the victims of trafficking. These people are often young and uneducated, as a result of which they are often unable to stand up for themselves or to assert their rights. In fact, in most cases, these people are not even aware of the rights that they have as workers. Moreover, these people are also completely at the mercy of their traffickers as well as their employers as far as money is concerned.

What Makes Them Hazardous?

The sweatshops employ a major percentage of the people smuggled into a country on illegal terms. Conditions in these sweatshops are usually extremely dingy, dimly lit and suffocating. Moreover, the work is endless and backbreaking; besides, many of these factories actually have material that is unhealthy and hazardous. It can be seen, in most cases, that the people working in any of these sweatshops have to deal with a certain degree of difficulties in hearing and eyesight after a long term association. The ones at maximum risk are the children, huge numbers of whom are employed in sweatshops on account of their softer and nimbler fingers.

Children- both young girls and boys- are employed in factories. While many of them have to deal with dangerous machinery completely inappropriate to their age, many others also have to deal with hazardous materials like gunpowder and other flammable substances, especially those working in the ammunitions and explosives industries. These children are constantly exposed to the risk of being immolated in an explosion or a fire breaking out. In fact, this is something that actually happens every year, with hundreds of children dying in such accidents.

Children employed in the domestic sector also face high risks of being beaten to death and ill treated. This happens mostly in cases where the child is sold to a family; that is, the family exerts a right of ownership over the commoditised human.