YANGON, Dec 9 -- Some 39 trafficked Myanmar women have been rescued and repatriated from neighbouring Thailand to Myanmar, according to the Myanmar Social Welfare Department on Wednesday.
Through Myawaddy border town, these women were brought to Mawlamyine, Mon state last week and settled at a cottage industry there to undergo vocational training for their livelihood in the future, reported China's Xinhua news agency.
According to the department, some 122 such repatriated victims have reached homes so far this year.
In 2008, the Myanmar authorities punished 342 traffickers in connection with 134 related cases, rescuing 203 victims, statistics showed.
According to the department, Xinhua said that under government-to-government system, a total of 686 victims, smuggled out of Myanmar, were rescued and brought back to the country as of 2008 and they were being kept at the rehabilitation centers.
Of them, those who were repatriated back from Thailand stood the majority with 344, followed by those from China with 272, Malaysia with 45, Japan, Bangladesh, Jamaica and Singapore as well as China's Macao, China's Taiwan.
The government has so far built eight rehabilitation centers offering educational program and vocational skill training for the victims.
Meanwhile, Myanmar, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, has developed information networks at highway terminals in the second largest city of Mandalay to curb human trafficking undertakings centered in the city.
Mandalay has been exposed as the country's internal human trafficking point and used as transit center to reach up to border areas along the trafficking route of Mandalay-Pyin Oo Lwin-Lashio- Muse to other countries.
-- BERNAMA
