A pat on the back

Between then and now, Bangladesh has worked itself out of the negative labelling; this is cheery news for the government as was evidenced by the way the outgoing home secretary Omar Farooq greeted it in a press conference on Wednesday.

In the present era of plethoric global rankings and perception indices, questions may have been raised about the methodologies and motivations, but conventional wisdom dictates that if a problem assumes critical proportions and brings national image to harm, it has to be faced head-on and of our own volition without appearing to be doing it under pressure.

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It is significant how quickly we have been able to turn the situation around on woman and child trafficking of which we had become part of the regional conduit. The positive outcome has been made possible by the adoption of a comprehensive strategy by the government duly backed by its will to succeed. The preventive measures included awareness building campaign, maintaining regular flow of information and screening and monitoring at the air and land ports. An award-punishment regimen was operated among the forces with great success. The follow up and rehabilitation steps taken on known cases helped a good deal.

Furthermore, trafficking cases were disposed of at a faster pace with convictions having been handed to a record number of culprits, several of them receiving death sentence and life term imprisonment with attendant deterrent effect on those waiting on the wings to launch themselves on trafficking missions. Let's build on the pattern to sustain the trend of success.