Bhagalpur, March 12: The state social welfare department has constituted a women’s brigade at the grassroots level to check human trafficking in the flood-ravaged Kosi region.

Each group, called Manav Vyapaar Virodhi Samiti, comprises schoolteachers, child development project officers and members of self-help groups run by women.

Sources in the department said about 500 women activists received training in the first phase of the programme chalked out to counter trafficking in Purnea, Katihar, Saharsa, Araria, Supaul and Madhepura districts.

In Purnea, training has been imparted to 53 high school teachers, 75 middle school teachers, 15 child development project officers, six women supervisors, 75 anganwadi sevikas and 73 activists of self-help groups. “The social welfare department had sent an order to police and administrative officials in these districts. They were also asked to set up information centres at bus stands and railway stations. The centres are working round-the-clock to thwart possible trafficking attempts,” a source said.

Superintendent of police (Saharsa) A. Rahaman said he has received the directive from the social welfare department. “Accordingly, we have stepped up policing at bus stands and railway stations,” he added.

“We are keeping a tab on the movement of outsiders as well as villagers willing to migrate. Besides, we are maintaining a special register to keep records of migration from the villages,” said Sunita, a member of a self-help group at Ranaiya in the Simri Bakthirpur block of Madhepura district. “We are alert against the menace of some villagers helping the traffickers in the name of negotiating marriages of girls. If we identify such cases, we would not allow the marriages without proper verification of the grooms,” she added.

Surveys conducted by the department revealed that human trafficking in the region was alarming with the traffickers choosing these districts as their favoured transit points to dispatch women to the adjoining districts of Nepal.

A survey conducted by the social welfare department for the period between 2007 and 2011 found 9,645 cases of trafficking. “But the actual number is much more than the figures released by the government. There are many cases that are not reported to police. Some of the villages where such incidents occur are remote. This is one reason why the incidents go unreported. Besides, illiteracy and poverty are to be blamed,” said Bijoy, an activist associated with Kosi Movement, a Saharsa-based social organisation.