CALL FOR CONCERTED EFFORTS TO FIGHT HUMAN TRAFFICKING (PAGE 20 LEAD)

8/08/2008
Story: Mary Mensah
(call for concerted efforts to fight human trafficking)
The Deputy Tema Regional Police Commander has called for a multi-faceted approach on the part of all law enforcement agencies in combating the human trafficking menace to bringing it under control.
He said the Human Trafficking Law (Act 694) would be strictly enforced by the police to bring the perpetrators of this heinous crime to book to serve as a deterrent to others.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) R. M. Ninson said this at a sensitisation durbar at Kpone-on-Sea near Tema to educate the people about the dangers of human trafficking.
He said human trafficking was a growing problem in all parts of the world because it had become a major revenue earner for organised criminal groups and a source of political, social and economic insecurity for states, as well as for individuals.
He said human trafficking mainly involved women and children who were taken from rural or deprived areas to the commercial and urban centres under the pretext of helping them, but end up as domestic servants, hawkers, commercial sex workers, truck pushers and fisher boys, who went under water to disentangle nets leading to some of them dying under the sea.
ACP Ninson said some of the perpetrators of the crime used different methods including abduction, outright sale of children by parents, bonded placement and deceit of parents in acquiring their victims.
He said the menace had a lot of bad effect on the individual, community and the country as a whole and it was upon that that in 2005 Ghana passed the human trafficking law to deal with all forms of trafficking, both domestically and internationally.
He said any person who violated the law was liable to a term of imprisonment not less than five years and advised members of the community with any information on any such crime to inform the police for immediate action to be taken.
For his part, ASP K. Akowuah from the Tema Regional Police said studies had shown that Ghana was becoming a source, transit point and destination country.
He said results of human trafficking were poverty, illiteracy, drug addition and increase in violent crimes such as armed robbery, among others.
The officer in charge of the Migration Management Bureau of the Ghana Immigration Service, Ms Judith Dzokoto, said in the past people blamed this abuse of human trafficking on ignorance but that was no excuse for breaking the law now.
She, therefore, called on all Ghanaians to join hands in the fight against human trafficking to weed it out of the country.
The Chief of Kpone, Nii Tetteh Otu, advised members of the community to report anybody suspected of dealing in human trafficking in order to save the children from this wicked people.
He said children were the future leaders of the nation and all efforts must be made to safeguard them and enable them to grow up to be responsible adults.