Government has been urged to strengthen regulations to protect organizations which rescue and protect the rights of trafficked children in Ghana from communal attacks.
The state has also been cautioned that modern slavery, in the form of trafficked children working for their masters, is still booming in many parts of Ghana, and that a tightened protection for organisations that fight the practice is a sustainable way of ending the menace.
The appeal was made by the Director of End Modern Slavery, a subsidiary of Engage Now Africa, David Kofi Ewusi, at a sensitization programme at Cape Coast on modern day child slavery and trafficking.
The sensitization event was dubbed ‘Harnessing Youth’s Power to Creating Child Trafficking-free Ghana’ gathered young men and women from all the metropolitan, municipal and districts in the Central Region.
Mr. Ewusi said users of trafficked children hold the view that organizations that rescue their victims are enemies to their illegal business, and resort to physical attacks on personnel of those organizations.
“People who are using these children and are exploiting them think that we are spoiling their business; they think they paid money to get the children, and they are supposed to use the children to do their work”, he lamented.
He stated an instance at the Keta Krachi area in the Volta Region in 2017 where personnel from Engage Africa Now were nearly lynched by community members as his team attempted to rescue a boy under slavery, a situation that forced them to abandon the boy.
The End Modern Slavery Director also complained about interference from top figures in the society in the prosecution of people arrested for child trafficking, saying this derails the efforts made to end child slavery in Ghana.
Delivering a message on behalf of the Central Regional Police Commander, the Regional Public Affairs Director of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Irene Serwah Oppong, announced the creation of desks at all district police stations to deal with human trafficking by the end of July 2018.
She asked the youth to provide the police with information on suspected trafficking activities across the Central Region.
DSP Irene told the gathering that, “There is a tradition in the Central Region that needs to be addressed. Our men at the barriers just intercept cars with children and you start your investigations, and you are told that it is a tradition here that every vacation they go to Yeji, they go to Accra to meet their people”.
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By: Joseph Ackon-Mensah/citinewsroom.com/Ghana