Prevention of Human Trafficking Bill

I would like to thank all nine Members who have spoken in affirmation of the ethos and objectives behind the Bill. I would like to thank Senior Minister of State Masagos and Senior Minister of State Amy Khor for conveying the Government’s unequivocal support and for explaining how our agencies can leverage on the Bill to enhance their anti-TIP efforts.

It is clear from this debate and the discussions leading up to it that the issues relating to TIP are complex. It is for this reason that we have developed the Bill from the backbone of extensive and meaningful consultations. Over the past year, we have canvassed a wide range of opinions, many with great emotion and interest. We have considered all of them very carefully and incorporated them into the Bill where appropriate. The Members have raised a number of issues. These can broadly be categorised into a few themes, namely, the scope and coverage of the Bill, territoriality, penalties, enforcement powers, victim assistance and protection, and international benchmarking. Let me address them in turn.

First, I will touch on and clarify the rationale behind certain definitions adopted in the Bill. Much effort has been spent in scoping appropriate definitions, given its far-reaching implications, as Mr Zainal Sapari has highlighted. Exploitation can take many forms and Mr Alex Yam and Mr Zainal Sapari have portrayed this vividly with the cases that they have cited. Should any of these activities happen in Singapore, these are the exact situations that we envision the Bill will cover. Mr Yam's example illustrates the need for a dedicated piece of legislation that is sufficiently robust to cover the full range of TIP activities. Under this Bill, we can recognise all elements of the Trafficking Act under a single offence and prosecute the perpetrator to the fullest extent of the law. Officers will also be vested with necessary powers to detect and investigate these crimes.

In the context of labour trafficking, Mrs Lina Chiam has asked for the reason why the Bill has not provided a definition for terms, such as "forced labour" and "deception". The interpretation section of the Bill provides a fairly comprehensive, not a very comprehensive, set of definitions for the key terms that are used. On balance, we felt that some of the terms should be kept broad to provide our Courts with sufficient flexibility to apply them to the diversity of cases that they will receive before them. The definitions in our existing laws and the international conventions, such as the Forced Labour Convention that Mrs Chiam has cited, will certainly be useful references.

While the Bill possesses a wide scope of application, given that TIP is a serious offence carrying severe penalties, it is important for the thresholds to be appropriately high. The prosecution must show all three elements of action, means and purpose to make out a trafficking offence. This ensures that we do not incorrectly elevate lesser violations into TIP offences where they are not warranted and also acts as a safeguard against false claims of

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trafficking, as Ms Tin Pei Ling had noted.

However, this is not to say that we will not go after cases that fall short of TIP. As Senior Minister of State Dr Amy Khor has noted, other pieces of legislation, such as the Penal Code, Women’s Charter and the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act, will continue to penalise related offences that may not need the TIP threshold.

Next, I come to the territorial scope of the Bill. Mr Zainal cites the example of trafficked fishermen to illustrate how the Bill allows us to do more in cross-jurisdictional trafficking cases where the victims are transited through Singapore. In fact, I received a report from NTU journalist students, who passed me the report personally, on this serious issue. Action can be taken as long as any part of the act has been committed within our borders. This is notwithstanding that exploitation may not have taken place in Singapore. I should repeat that – this is not notwithstanding that exploitation may not have taken place in Singapore. The Bill recognises the transboundary nature of the offence and allows us to contribute to combating TIP regionally.

With regard to the penalties for TIP, all Members have supported the need for firm deterrence. The call for stiff penalties was also unanimous during the public consultation exercise. Dr Janil Puthucheary and Mr Gerald Giam have suggested for higher penalties than what is being prescribed, in view of the syndicated and severe nature of the crime.

Let me address this important issue. The proposed penalties that we see in the Bill are established on two key principles – proportionality and deterrence. The penalties must be proportionate to those for similar crimes in our other criminal laws and they should also be severe enough to deter would-be offenders. As mentioned in my opening speech, we have pegged the imprisonment term to the offence of importing a woman for purposes of prostitution under section 373A of the Penal Code, which also provides for a maximum 10-year imprisonment sentence and reflects similar gravity. It is also aligned to the offence of offering to sell organs or blood from another person under section 14(2A) of the Human Organ Transplant Act (HOTA). This offence is similar to the act of trafficking for the purposes of organ harvesting which the Bill covers, hence, the intense deliberation on the parity of sentencing with our existing suite of laws.

As a further deterrent, we have also provided for a caning sentence. This is apt, given that elements of force and coercion, as well as the serious exploitation of the human form, are present in trafficking offences. We have adopted a similar discretionary caning penalty of up to six strokes for a first-time offender from the Moneylenders Act for the offences of unlicensed moneylending and harassment which, we can all agree, is another serious crime involving syndicate elements. Repeat offenders face up to one-and-a-half times the punishment, including caning of up to nine strokes, which will be mandatory in such

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instances.

On Dr Intan Azura's point for heavier penalties to be imposed where the victim is a child, this has already been expressly indicated as an aggravating factor in clause 4(2)(c) and the provision will seek the Court's consideration to impose a stiffer sentence than what would ordinarily be applicable to deter such perpetrators.

Just a brief explanation – for a first-time offender, it is up to 10 years' imprisonment. The first-time offender may not, in the Court's discretion, receive up to 10 years. For example, the Court's discretion moves him or her to pass a sentence of six or seven years but, because of an aggravating factor which is listed in the Bill, the Court then has the discretion to increase the sentence to something higher, say, eight or nine years. So, this intention to protect the victims, which is Dr Intan Azura's point, has already been subsumed in the legislation.

I should also add that the Bill does not act alone and other punitive levers remain applicable. For instance, the Court, when convicting an offender for a TIP offence, may additionally make an order under the Criminal Procedure Code to compensate his victim for the harm caused and losses incurred. This is in response to Mr Gerald Giam who wanted some form of civil remedy to be introduced into the Bill. Under section 359 of the Criminal Procedure Code, a Court is bound to consider whether or not to award compensation to a victim of crime and, if he or she is so inclined, then he or she must do so. So, the law already caters for what Mr Giam has in mind in terms of that form of remedy and what Mrs Lina Chiam talked about on reparation and restitution. It is already subsumed in section 359 of the Criminal Procedure Code which this Bill can lean on. Furthermore, a trafficker's ill-gotten gains may, additionally, be subject to confiscation under the Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Other Serious Crimes (Confiscation of Benefits) Act, once the offence of trafficking is scheduled in that Act.

Our position is unambiguous. TIP offenders can expect to pay a very heavy price for their crimes. This is no different from our stance towards other serious crimes.

With regard to the scope of enforcement powers in Part 3 of the Bill, let me assure Mrs Lina Chiam that the powers are adapted from the Employment of Foreign Manpower Act – an Act which already exists in our Statute books – and are not new; neither are they excessive. MOM officers already possess these powers to support their investigations into labour violation cases. We need to import these powers specifically into the Bill so that the MOM officers will be able to lean on them when investigating and enforcing. The powers will be similarly useful in the context of investigations into the more serious potential trafficking cases. I echo the point that Mr Zainal had made about the necessity for enforcement officers to be allowed to carry non-lethal defensive aids for protection during operations. These

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operations are not without risk and I would add that officers are equipped with the doctrines and training to carry out these tasks responsibly and professionally. If a Member or any NGO is aware of any specific allegation of abuse by the enforcement officers, I strongly advise them to refer it immediately to the proper authorities, as opposed to making general claims in this House, and I am sure it will be thoroughly looked into.

I now come to the issues pertaining to victim assistance. All Members who spoke have touched on victim assistance and the importance of providing victims with adequate protection and support so that they are facilitated in their recovery and are encouraged to report their cases and testify against their traffickers. I am ad idem, I am of a similar mind with many of the Members who have spoken up for the victims in this House. I assure the House that this is wholeheartedly the shared view of both the Taskforce and I.

Mr Alex Yam, Ms Tin Pei Ling, Mrs Lina Chiam, Mr Gerald Giam and, indeed, many interested segments of the public have queried as to why the protection measures accorded to victims under the Bill seem so limited. I echo what Dr Janil Puthucheary had said that the best cure is prevention and one should not look at a simple arithmetic to see how many parts of the Bill are allocated to victim, enforcement, prevention and so on. A suite of measures and prevention is specifically the best upstream cure. But I can understand the Members' concerns and I do not wish to underplay them in any way. Senior Minister of State Masagos has provided an explanation on the Government's priorities and efforts in this area and how the existing victim care regime operates in relation to the Bill. I will not repeat those points but it bears emphasising that the measures in the Bill do not stand alone and complement what is currently available to all victims of crime. The provisions in Part 4 of the Bill precisely seek to support the delivery of effective care to victims and not detract from it, although I accept that views may differ on the means to bring this about.

On what the Members very recently raised, for example, employment as part of the measures in victim protection in the Bill, my experience speaking with some trafficked women is that they do not want to be employed. They want to stay in the comfort and security of a shelter. So, it may not be wise to overly prescribe or be overly prescriptive in terms of what measures we want to load the Bill with. An administrative flexibility to our enforcement officers on the ground may be the better remedy and the better measure.

Mr Giam talked about partnership. Yes, the taskforce certainly partners and I have worked with partners in this field. So, it is not only about prevention; it is not only about protection, but it is certainly also about partnership. And the authorities do leverage heavily on the compassion and the unique insights of VWOs and the shelters which are currently occupied with this meaningful work.

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Mrs Lina Chiam also talked about clause 19(1). I think Mrs Chiam's point was whether all victims, whether victims of human organ trafficking, sexual exploitation or victims of labour trafficking, could avail themselves of the rights under clause 19(1). The answer is yes. They may avail themselves of these rights. So, one group is not discriminated vis-a-vis the other group.

So, what is effective victim care? As Senior Minister of State Masagos has mentioned, effective victim care is a model that delivers the required support services to victims promptly and reliably, based on their needs. These needs differ from individual to individual. This is affirmed from my own interactions with victims at a local shelter, where it struck me how unique their circumstances were. In this regard, it is not meaningful to exhaustively list out all the measures that can be provided in the Bill, if we do not intend to provide them all as a common suite to each victim. I believe this is a point made insightfully by Mr Zainal Sapari and I thank him for his work and the work of his colleagues at the Migrant Workers’ Centre.

An effective victim care model is also one that is robust against abuse, as some Members have noted. Ms Tin Pei Ling has cautioned that we should prevent the law from being abused as a backdoor to gain legal residence and employment. I think Dr Janil Puthucheary’s comment on mitigating false claims of trafficking is also relevant in this context. We agree fully and I am, indeed, very mindful that the Bill should not encourage such behaviour. This is a real risk and is a key reason why the Bill has refrained from hard-coding measures like legal residence and employment as rights or entitlements. This is unprecedented in our local laws and doing so only serves to make the assessment process more rigid. In the worst case, it opens the regime to abuse by incentivising persons to claim that they were trafficked in order to gain access to these measures. This could complicate investigations and create enforcement difficulties.

Instead, the Bill continues to adopt a balanced approach by leaving the assessment and provision of the various victim care measures to the professional discretion of the ground agencies. For instance, depending on the circumstances, victims can be provided special passes to even stay in Singapore and will be provided even temporary employment under MOM's Temporary Job Scheme, as Senior Minister of State Dr Amy Khor has explained.

On a related point, Mr Alex Yam and Mrs Chiam have touched on immunity from prosecution for victims and whether we can provide for it within the Bill as an assurance to victims who come forward. As a matter of practice, I understand our authorities usually do not prosecute a victim for offences which they are compelled to commit as a direct consequence of being a TIP victim, quite simply because they have not acquiesced or consented to and they may not even have the requisite mental element or the mens rea to commit these under compulsion. So, I think some comfort can be derived from those legal

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principles. The Public Prosecutor makes a detailed assessment based on the full facts of each case, not least the degree of culpability of the parties involved. This process applies uniformly to all categories of crime and the Bill should not fetter the exercise of the Public Prosecutor’s discretion.

I would like to touch on Dr Janil Puthucheary's point. I think he was quite nuanced about false claims. I touched on it earlier but I would like to address it because I like to respect that point, which is a valid point. What is our thinking on false claims if indeed all of these victims' rights are hardwired into the Bill? Traditionally, vice activities are deterred via raids. So, you have enforcement raids and the Vice Branch goes down and these are conducted regularly and perhaps 50 ladies are rounded up. If you are rounded up, you have every incentive to say, look, I have been trafficked and I have all of these rights – employment, legal residence, wage and so on – it becomes a very difficult exercise for the Police and, certainly, for those in the Attorney-General's Chambers, to decipher who is and who is not a genuine human trafficking victim. I think we should have the confidence in our officers to determine and assess who deserves and which unique victim deserves a unique type of victim measure that they require and to provide a compassionate and unique set of assistance for each of these vulnerable victims. So, that, essentially, is a practical difficulty of hardwiring, in a legislative format, victim protection measures into the Bill, rather than have them in a balanced approach and dealt with in an honest fashion administratively, with appropriate discretion.

Sir, this approach of not entrenching all measures in the Bill does not mean that effective victim care cannot be provided. On the contrary, by allowing the Government agencies to make a thorough assessment on each victim's needs, we ensure we have a victim care regime that is robust, flexible and fair.

As Senior Minister of State Masagos has explained, there are specialised investigation teams within the agencies that look into trafficking cases. These are staffed with experienced and competent officers who are trained to identify, refer and provide for genuine victims, based on their respective needs.

Let me assure Dr Intan that the Director of Social Welfare will only appoint Child Protection Officers, counsellors, psychologists and social workers in voluntary welfare organisations who are trained in addressing the needs of victims of child abuse. On this point, let me also assure Mrs Chiam that the Director of Social Welfare will be able to provide for all trafficked victims, as provided for under this Bill.

There are also established protocols to support frontline officers in their roles so that all cases of potential trafficking are investigated thoroughly and managed sensitively. Members would be glad to know that the suite of victim care services is also regularly reviewed and enhanced under the National Plan of Action. The task force is committing

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significant effort and resources to this cause, including studying how we can partner civil societies – so, partnership is very much a part of this – to better deliver services to the victims. This, to me, is the hallmark of an effective regime and is one that the Bill seeks to uphold.

Dr Janil and Mr Gerald Giam observed that successful prosecution of the offenders depends largely on the cooperation of the victims. I agree. It is, therefore, our hope, through our various assistance measures and avenues, to conceal the identity of witnesses and informers that the Bill provides for. We have victims who are emotionally and physically able and cared for and encouraged and willing to assist in investigations and trial. This goes a long way towards promoting the objectives of the Bill in deterring TIP.

Some Members have raised questions on international benchmarking. In developing this Bill, we have, indeed, benchmarked ourselves to international standards and norms, especially the UN TIP Protocol. Laws from other jurisdictions, such as the US, UK, Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, were also studied and our laws are aligned in most respects. For instance, Hong Kong law similarly prescribes up to 10 years' imprisonment for sex trafficking-related offences. While certain jurisdictions prescribe even higher maximum imprisonment terms, our laws provide the option of caning, which can be imposed in deserving cases.

Nevertheless, I must stress that we have been mindful to ensure that all terminology and measures we have adopted internationally work well with our existing frameworks and laws. We want to ensure our measures are enforceable and pragmatic.

I think I have covered the points that have been made. I thank once again the Members who have spoken for their comments and their support.

In conclusion, Sir, human trafficking is an inhuman crime which leaves victims buried in anguish and hopelessness. The introduction of this Bill is one of the many efforts we can undertake to stay ahead of this scourge and protect our most vulnerable. It attempts to empower the powerless and give a voice to the voiceless. It raises our standards of combating TIP domestically and internationally and sends a strong signal of our continued commitment towards dismantling this evil and in upholding justice.

Ultimately, is this law about ourselves, or does it extend beyond ourselves? It extends beyond ourselves. Many will be exploited foreigners. But this House will not turn the other way. It will, I hope, acknowledge the vulnerability of the exploited and protect each one of them.

I urge the House and, indeed, all persons who hope for a better Singapore to give your fullest support to the Bill, to extend a hand and a heart to the vulnerable who are exploited.

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Sir, I beg to move. [Applause.]