Stakeholders urged to assist fight against child-trafficking

Globeserve Ministries International, a church engaged in missionary training and vocational education, in collaboration with its partners, is working towards combating child slavery on the Volta Lake.

The Church, in partnership with Westwood Community Church and Wooddale Church, all in the United States of America (USA), seeks to map out the role of religious, community leaders, and other relevant stakeholders in fighting child slavery in the South and Central Tongu districts.

Reverend Anthony Kofi Dunya, the General Overseer of Globeserve Ministries International, during a meeting at Adidome with these stakeholders to strategise towards curbing the practice, said perpetrators of those acts were parents and family people, who were expected to ensure the child’s welfare.

The menace is dominant in the districts where most children could be seen on the lakes, farms and other places when they were supposed to be in school.

“This led my Ministry to join the fight against child trafficking in the last four years,” he said.

Rev. Dunya said Globeserve Ministries International had engaged more than 600 boat masters in the various districts in Ghana towards rescuing those disadvantaged children.

“We are very poised to creating the awareness of trafficking children to Yeji and other places into slavery. Our findings signposted that most children who were victims are from North, South and Central Tongu districts,” he said.

Rev Dunyo, therefore, urged everyone to disseminate the information against child slavery to help keep the children home than selling them off.

“There is no freedom and justice when children who are the future leaders of the country are trafficked into slavery.”

Apostle Emmanuel Nii Okuley Tettey, the General Secretary of the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, said God hates the abuse of children’s right and called on all to secure and defend the rights of trafficked children to end the menace.

He entreated the people to always report any case of child trafficking to the nearest Social Welfare office or police station for the relevant intervention.

Togbe Kwasinyi Kakaklolo Agyeman V, Chief of Adidome, a victim of child trafficking, said it would be an indictment on all stakeholders in the Tongu districts if child trafficking was not eradicated in the modern day.

He appealed to the Government to set up a trust fund to rehabilitate trafficked children in the districts and pledged to enact domestic laws to clamp down on the practice at Central Tongu.

Christian Attimah, a representative from the Social Welfare Department at Adidome, said apart from the “barbaric act” within the Tongu districts, many were trafficked to Yeji and Afram Plains with the area encountering 16 reported cases and two deaths in 2022.

He said many children, as young as four years-old, who were denied education were rescued from boat masters with many not surviving the abuses and had passed on.

Mr. Attimah called on the parents to desist from selling their children to known and unknown people under the pretext of getting them better education, adding female trafficked children suffered sexual abuse and child marriage.

Representatives from the Ghana Police Service also cautioned that the laws of the country frowned on trafficking of children and that perpetrators would be arrested and prosecuted.