Nigerian hotel works asked to help fight human trafficking

 In Nigeria, a major source and transit country for women and children being trafficked into forced labour and forced prostitution, the Women’s Consortium of Nigeria, in collaboration with the Hotel and Personal Services Senior Staff Association,  supported by  the Programme Against Trafficking of Persons and Forced Labour in West Africa of the  International Labour Organisation (ILO) have spoken out asking that hotel staff in the country play a major role in helping to stop human trafficking. Speaking at a recent conference in Lagos, Naomi Akpan-Ita of Impact for Change and Development said;
“Hotel workers and road transport workers have been known to have more contact with traffickers and trafficked persons than any other groups. There is therefore a need to create awareness amongst hotel workers on their potentials for combating human trafficking. Hotel workers need to serve as surveillance and alert groups in the fight against trafficking in the course of their work. One main source of information on a customer is the registration form at the point of checking in to the hotel. Ensuring that all relevant aspects of this form (that could assist in tracing the customer if the need arose) are properly filled, would be a first step towards assisting in the fight against trafficking.” “Surveillance and observation of human movement at the time of checking in is another way of checking trafficking. Consciously observing who checks in and what company they may have might prove useful information in combating trafficking. A situation where one person checks in while another four or five are seen hanging around the lobby and all later crowd into one room might be indicative of a group of adults under the control of one person. Surveillance would also entail observing the type of visitors and the frequency of such visits to a particular patron of a hotel.”
Hotel staff can play a vital role in the fight against trafficking and it is important that all staff are trained to recognise the signs when someone has been trafficked.