Photo credit: CCO Petr Šmerkl, Wikipedia

Two men have been arrested and charged as a result of an investigation by the Saskatchewan Trafficking Response Team.

Earlier this year, the Swift Current STRT began an investigation into a human trafficking operation. Through the investigation officers determined a woman from Bangladesh was in Saskatchewan on a visitors permit after answering an ad on a job site. When she arrived, she was provided a working permit and began shifts at restaurants in Gull Lake, Elrose, and Tisdale. Police say she was forced to work 10 to 12 hours a day and seven days a week for months on end. When she wasn’t working, she was kept in a dark, water damaged, concrete basement where her employers threatened to take her work permit away if she didn’t obey their rules.

Forty-one-year-old Mohammad Masum from Tisdale and 52-year-old Sohel Haider from Elrose are each charged with one count of human trafficking. Masum is also charged with three counts of sexual assault. A third man was released without charge. They are scheduled to appear in Rosetown Provincial Court on July 13th.

The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime, 2020, estimates 50 per cent of trafficking victims were trafficked into sexual exploitation and 38 per cent for forced labour. At 67 per cent the same number of women trafficked for sexual exploitation is the number of men investigated for trafficking in persons. The UNODC estimates that 46 per cent of trafficking victims are women, 34 per cent are children, and 20 per cent are men.