Like NAATIP, the Gambia Football Federation also does not have any record of trafficking in sports.īabucarr Jobe, the federation’s director of competition, said GFF is working on organizing “massive sensitization” to create awareness about trafficking in sports and how sportsmen and women can avoid falling into the trap of so-called foreign club recruitment agents. The National Agency Against Trafficking in Person (NAATIP), the government agency established to tackle human trafficking in all forms in The Gambia, has said they do not have any records of trafficking in person through sports, but acknowledged that it could be happening.Įxperts on human trafficking said in most cases, victims of trafficking do not report their cases to authorities for fear of stigmatization. The football agent affirmed that “trafficking has been happening in sports and is still happening”.
Faceless menace professional#
“The bad salary is what is forcing many young footballers to look for other means to become professional players and get better wages,” Beyai said. Those considered highly paid players earn about hundred and fifty dollars. In The Gambia, for example, most players are paid less than an equivalent of hundred dollars monthly. The football agent said although FIFA and Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) have put strict measures for signing football players, there are still agents who target African players because of the poverty in sports in this part of the world. “I was later contacted as a journalist to report on the plight of the boys and I subsequently contacted the Professional Footballers Association to help them out.” But when these young boys got there, their passports were seized and they ended up as domestic workers. “Some time back when I was a journalist, there were three Gambian players, for confidentiality I can’t reveal their names, who were falsely given opportunity to play professional football in the Middle East by somebody who claimed to be a recruitment agent for certain clubs in there.
“The dream of playing in a foreign league with all the benefits and fame that comes with such, makes young footballers easily exploitable by so-called agents,” said Beyai, who was once a journalist. Modou Lamin Beyai, a football agent, said so-called football agents take advantage of stories like that of Ebrima to lure young people who see a professional career in sports in a foreign land as a way out of poverty and a way to financially assist their families. This has offered and widened the opportunity for human traffickers claiming to be intermediaries or agents of foreign football clubs to lure young sportsmen and women on the guise of taking them to foreign countries legally to further their sporting career.
However, because of public sensitisations on the dangers of such journey and how unlikely it is to be another Ebrima in Italy, a lot of young people have given up on that route. Despite the danger of the journey, stories like his have kindled the attention of many young players in The Gambia. Ebrima, 20, travelled irregularly and dangerously to Italy through war-torn Libya and the Mediterranean Sea.
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