Child traffickers hit Namibia: WAD

CHILD trafficking recruiters have allegedly entered Namibia to lure young girls to South Africa, where they will be forced to become sex workers to meet the expected increase in demand during the Fifa 2010 World Cup.

Veronica De Klerk, the Director of the Women’s Action for Development (WAD) in Namibia, on Tuesday warned that ‘WAD has been reliably informed that three South African women of Xhosa and Afrikaans origin have entered Namibia where they are busy recruiting young girls’ for the increased demand for sex workers in South Africa.’Impeccable sources have informed WAD that some girls have already crossed the Namibian border into South Africa after having been promised huge sums of money to engage in commercial sex work during the forthcoming Soccer World Cup in South Africa,’ De Klerk said.WAD has alerted the Inspector General of the Namibian Police, Lieutenant General Sebastian Ndeitunga, of this development and urged the Police to investigate.Minister of Home Affairs and Immigration Rosalia Nghidinwa has also been alerted by WAD, which requested her to step up scrutiny of vehicles at border posts.According to De Klerk, sex recruiters focus on unemployed young girls and offer them ‘lucrative employment and great wealth’ if they go to South Africa. The story always ends badly when ‘gullible girls arrive at their destination, they reportedly discover to their horror that they are being exploited in the sex trade and that not a word about the honourable employment and lucrative salaries is true.’De Klerk said girls who refused to believe the sales pitch were sometimes forced into the sex trade.’If such girls refuse to co-operate, they are simply raped, beaten up or even killed. Very few women ever succeed to escape to freedom and if they do, they are left penniless, without a home and food in a foreign country.’WAD advises parents to warn their daughters about such scams.