By Goh Chin Lian
THE Singapore Government made public on Saturday its point by point rebuttal of a US government report accusing Singapore of not doing enough to curb sex and labour trafficking.
The six-page document criticised the annual Trafficking in Persons report, published on June 14, for wrong assertions and factual errors.
It made the stand that Singapore did not have a serious human trafficking problem, and said Singapore will continue its calibrated and pragmatic approach rather than 'blindly follow a one-for-all operating model just to achieve a better technical ranking' on the US report.
Singapore's Ambassador in Washington DC Chan Heng Chee has delivered the document, dated June 30, to Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell and Ambassador-at-Large Luis CdeBaca.
The US report had placed Singapore on a human trafficking watch list for the first time, with countries like China and India.
The Singapore Government noted that just as the US has developed its own way to deal with its trafficking problems, different countries adopt different approaches. It said: 'It is a matter of what works for each country.'