POLICE SETS UP UNIT TO CHECK HUMAN TRAFFICKING (Back Page)

05/04/08

Story: Mary Mensah
AN Anti-Human Trafficking Unit has been established at the headquarters of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police Service to handle human trafficking cases.
The Unit will receive from the public complaints regarding human trafficking, investigate, arrest and prosecute all offenders under the Human Trafficking Act, 2005 (Act 694).
The new unit will also collaborate with other stakeholders to embark on a vigorous awareness and sensitisation campaign to inform members of the public about the dangers and effects of human trafficking both locally and internationally.
Some of the stakeholder institutions are the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, UNICEF, International Organisation of Migration (IOM), Department of Social Welfare, Ghana Immigration Service, Attorney General's Office, Passport Office and some NGOs.
According to the Director of the Police Public Affairs Directorate, DSP Kwesi Ofori, trafficking in human beings has assumed grave international dimensions.
Following this, the United Nations, other international agencies and governments all over the world are tackling issues of trafficking in human beings in a more organised and focussed way.
He said the International Police Organisation (INTERPOL), for example, considered it as one of its six priority crime areas and had planned elaborate annual programmes for workshops, conferences, provision of reference materials ad sponsorship packages for police training activities in human trafficking.
DSP Ofori said in view of this, most law enforcement agencies had or were creating specialised units to deal effectively with this growing menace in co-operation with other agencies dealing with other forms of organised crime.
“Unfortunately, pundits opine that due to cultural and customary practices, human trafficking is not considered a serious crime in Africa and in Ghana, despite the promulgation of the Human Trafficking Act 2005(Act 694), a significant number of people in some communities actively engage in human trafficking,” he said.
He indicated that the unit would liaise with other stakeholders to adopt proactive methods to prevent trafficking in human beings (domestic and international), co-operate with Law Enforcement Agencies world-wide in operations to crack down on international/domestic criminal gangs involved in human trafficking;
The director noted that the new unit would liaise with the National Headquarters Operations, Regional Operational Units, Rapid Deployment Forces, Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU) and INTERPOL/Ghana, to offer prompt response to human trafficking cases.
He said the unit would again liaise with regional, divisional, district and unit crime officers to collect and collate information on human trafficking cases to feed the National Crime Statistics Database.
DSP Ofori said the new Unit fell under the Organised Crime Unit, which has been restructured and re-organised.
Human trafficking, commonly referred to as "modern day slavery", is a global phenomenon that involves obtaining or maintaining the labour or services of another through the use of force, fraud or coercion in violation of an individual's human rights.
Generating billions of dollars in profit each year for patrons, human trafficking is one of the world's fastest growing criminal activities, operating on the same scale as the illegal trade in guns and drugs.
Fuelled by global economic conditions and increased international mobility, the market for and trade in human beings continues to expand rapidly.