Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday announced the setting up of a task force that will coordinate government action to deal with modern slavery in Britain and across the globe.
In her previous role as home secretary, May had piloted the Modern Slavery Act in 2015 to address the scourge, whose victims include Indians brought to UK as domestic staff and others forced into prostitution or workers in fields, factories and fishing boats.
May wrote in a signed article in The Sunday Telegraph that the government will work collaboratively with law enforcement agencies across the world to track and stop the pernicious gangs who operate across borders and jurisdictions.
Noting Britain’s role in getting the eradication of modern slavery into the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, she said her government will use £33 million from the aid budget to create a five-year International Modern Slavery Fund focused on high-risk countries.
“It is hard to comprehend that such sickening and inhuman crimes are lurking in the shadows of our country. But the most recent estimates suggest that there are between 10,000 and 13,000 victims in the UK alone and over 45 million across the world’, May wrote.
“Just as it was Britain that took an historic stand to ban slavery two centuries ago, so Britain will once again lead the way in defeating modern slavery and preserving the freedoms and values that have defined our country for generations,” she added.
{{/usCountry}}“Just as it was Britain that took an historic stand to ban slavery two centuries ago, so Britain will once again lead the way in defeating modern slavery and preserving the freedoms and values that have defined our country for generations,” she added.
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