Traffickers are using Nav apartments as brothels

NAV,NAV logo. Photo Norway Today Media

Traffickers in prostitution are abusing the scheme to assist victims of trafficking, and use Nav-funded apartments in Oslo as brothels, police said.
– We have been informed by the authorities in southern Europe that there are clear indications that traffickers instructs victims of trafficking to seek asylum or on reflection – to get legal residence in the country, continue the business and send money to bakmannsapparatet says Thor Martin Elton, chairman of trafficking group in the Oslo police, told NRK.
The so-called reflection scheme provides suspected victims of trafficking temporary residence permit for six months, free apartments and over 6,000 per month in Oslo. But in many cases the prostitution just continues in the Nav-funded apartments.
– We can not have a system whereby public authorities effectively are involved in brothels,  Mildred Mikkelsen, head of the so-called Pink Project, said to the channel.
Mikkelsen says traffickers are sending young Nigerian women to Norway and instruct them to apply for “reflection” through designated lawyers and housing through Nav Grünerløkka.
She believes the reflection scheme makes it easy to commit prostitution from the apartments, and that it seems  the scheme in practice is more adapted for traffickers than a measure that helps women out of prostitution and trafficking.
The Ministry of Justice will now go through the whole scheme.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today