And today, Musa wasn't wearing his area representative hat but his ministerial one as he met with the Ministry of Human Development, and the DPP's office on the thorny topic of human trafficking.
It's an illegal activity that's believed to be widespread in Belize, terrorizing young girls and women tricked or trafficked across the border in the hopes of going north - but stuck in Belize, with no documents, and no way home, often forced to work as bar girls.
A multi-dimensional problem and one that's hard to arrest. But these agencies are trying to untangle the complex factors that are at play - so that fewer victims are caught up in this life of quiet terror and invisible bondage.
Minister Musa said that there will be a team responsible for addressing this issue and regular check-ups to ensure that progress is being made.
Hon. Kareem Musa - Minister of Home Affairs "As you know between the years 2015 to 2018, we were on tier 3, which is the absolute worst, it has improved over the last two years, so we are now ranked at tier 2, so we are looking to see how we can actually better that we don't want to be stagnant, we want to see how we can get to tier 1 or even better, not be on a tier at all. And so that is why it's important for us to discuss today ways in which we can improve in terms of our protection of victims as well as prosecutions and investigations for human trafficking cases in Belize so it was actually a very meaningful discussion, multi-agency discussion, to discuss ways we can improve. It's always good to take stock of where we are, what is not working, and what we can do to improve the current situation so we are establishing a core group which will also be meeting on a regular basis, the technocrats so to speak, who will be addressing these very issues, and so that is something that I believe is going to assist us moving forward and of course we can always meet on a quarterly basis or even semi-annually to see how it is we are moving along when it comes to human trafficking. As you know, human trafficking involves victims who are brought into the country and held against their will so a lot of our focus today is to see how we can 1) protect the witnesses better to keep them in the care of human development, to ensure that they are at all time well protected and taken care of and also to ensure that they continue along the path of their willingness to cooperate, not just with the police, but with the DPP and the Ministry of Human Development that they're going to see the case all the way to the end so we're looking at that and we're also looking at how we can bring up the rials because like I said it's a very unique offense and many time the victims just decide to pick up and leave the country and go back to their country of origin and they don't participate in the trial. And this has consequences, not just locally but internally because we're placed on these different tiers, we're blacklisted so to speak."
