Create more jobs to save our youths

AS younger people, mostly from the rural areas are desperately trying to find a job to help the family and themselves, human traffickers are taking advantage of their helplessness and forcing them to fall into trap in the name of providing them job abroad and within the country. News report on Wednesday said RAB detained nine people who deceived 130 people in the name of giving jobs. The cheating has become endemic, as agents of human traffickers are moving around the countryside to lure unemployed youths to send them abroad and then holding them captive even within the country to pay for freedom.

It is heinous crimes and though law enforcers are occasionally arresting the cheaters, much of the tragedy is going unnoticed. Recently some human traffickers collected five young people from some Sylhet villages promising to send them to Libya on good job offer although it is a dangerous place where civil war has totally destroyed the country and warring factions are in control in absence of functional public institutions. They promised the boys to send them to Turkey first from Dhaka airport through Dubai but as per disclosure they later tried to take the boys to Chittagong saying they will take the flight from India. One boy slipped out from their grip and the whereabouts of four others is not clear. We know Cox’s Bazar and Tekhnaf were landing spot of traffickers for so-called job seekers in Malaysia two years back and thousands of ill-fated voyagers perished on the way. Traffickers may be reviving this route again or putting young people to Middle East and Africa with a promise of reaching them to Europe. We are afraid when the law enforcers are too much busy to nab militants and government critics, human traffickers may be using the lull to run the slave trade dodging security vigilance.
 
Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) personnel this time detained nine people who were holding 130 young men in their Mirpur office on Monday to give jobs. They were using a fake office and realized Tk 20,000 to one lakhs as security money for the salesman job and such other skill. But they did not giving them appointment and wasting time in false promises. Insiders said these people have also engaged agents all over the country who collect young people for commission and later disappear.
 
This is how our younger people are cheated hoping for a job while our government attention is not much focused on new job creation and income generation activities. Politics is making few wealthy but the younger people are falling into trap instead of finding way of a decent livelihood. Tall talks are thickening the air when human traffickers are destroying the future of our young people. We must say vigilance must increase and government activities must focus on how to create more jobs.