Crashed dreams – the quagmire of irregular migration
“I cannot say all the things that happened to me and my colleagues. It was hell there. I will never advise even my enemy to go to Saudi Arabia all in the name of work.
“We were 15 females serving our master as domestic workers. The other ladies with me were from Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and the Philippines. We worked without sleeping but we went through many forms of exploitations and abuses.”
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A 23-year-old (name withheld) who was among 22 females deported from Saudi Arabia in September this year narrated how God intervened in her escape from “that prison” to Ghana’s embassy in Saudi Arabia and eventually to the deportation camp.
When she left the shores of Ghana to Saudi Arabia on May 12, 2017, it was all smiles for her. The sugar-tongued recruitment agent made her believe that the grass was greener at the other side of town.
Although she had no clue about the terms of the contract, she was convinced that she was on the path to kissing bye to poverty. And when she touched down at Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital, she was on cloud nine, knowing that her dream had taken shape. But as hours grew into days; days into weeks; and weeks gave way to months, it became increasingly clear to her that all that glittered was not gold after all.
The anticipation of a stream that flowed with honey and milk turned out to be a bitter pool laced with servitude, brute and gross abuse of human rights.
She is just one of thousands of young women who have been trafficked to the Gulf countries, including Kuwait, Qatar and Oman, and exposed to all forms of exploitation. Thousands of young people in West Africa in particular are also locked up in the jaws of irregular migration.
Irregular migration
According to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), irregular migration is the “movement of persons that takes place outside the laws, regulations or international agreements governing the entry into or exit from the State of origin, transit or destination”.
One such person is 39-year-old Eric Opoku Ware, who has seen it all in the infamous journey to Europe through the Sahara Desert. He left the shores of Ghana after his senior high school (SHS) education in 2002 to seek greener pastures the hard way.
With the help of middlemen and fake recruitment agents, he embarked on the journey to Libya by land, through the Sahara Desert, with the hope of entering Europe but returned to Ghana after four failed attempts to enter Italy by boat.
"We were 60 people who started the journey through the Sahara Desert to Libya but only 15 of us survived and entered Libya. Many of our colleagues died through thirst for water and hunger; others were killed by militants and robbers; the women among us were raped; our money was stolen; in fact, the journey to Libya was hell," he narrated.
The 2018 Global Migration Indicators report revealed that 258 million international migrants, representing 3.4 per cent of the global population, were recorded globally in 2017.
The statistics further showed that 50 million irregular migrants were estimated to be living around the world while 2.5 million of such migrants were smuggled for an economic return of about $7 billion in 2016.
It added that at least, 6,163 migrants lost their lives or went missing during migration in 2017.
Persistence
With these scary figures, it would have been expected that people would stay away from irregular migration, but that is not the case as many are still putting their lives on the line.
For instance, on October 7 this year, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that at least 13 women, some of them pregnant, drowned when a boat crowded with migrants capsized in the Mediterranean Sea while more than a dozen others were still missing. The boat which had earlier left the Tunisian coast with about 50 people on board, reportedly tipped over near the Italian island of Lampedusa.
The UN estimates that from January to August this year, some 1,549 migrant deaths have been recorded, with more than 1,000 occurring on the Mediterranean Sea.
The IOM revealed that since May 2017, 1,003 Ghanaian migrants returned to their communities of origin with support from the organisation, with about 35 per cent of the returnees falling within the school age in the country (up to 26 years old).
It added that almost 60 per cent of them were from the Brong Ahafo, Ashanti and Greater Accra regions, making those areas the highest regions of return in 2017 and 2018 according to a recent Assistance to Voluntary and Humanitarian Report.
The IOM report further indicated that about 53,200 irregular Ghanaian migrants were still in Libya, making Ghana one of the highly ranked countries with irregular migrants in a North African country.
Ghana came fifth out of 12 countries with a total of 31,251 migrants in Libya, followed by Nigeria which had a total of 29,605 migrants and Mali with 24,105 migrants.
Niger topped the list of countries with 78,723 migrants followed by Egypt, which had a total of 78,616 migrants in Libya. It is also reported that since 2014, more than 400,000 African migrants and refugees have crossed the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy.
Persistence?
In the view of Mr Opoku Ware, irregular migration persisted because of the lucrative nature of the business often facilitated by a cartel of highly networked recruitment agents.
“They make huge profit from that business so they always lure the prospective irregular migrants to make the trip. For instance, a boat can take up to 200 migrants and each migrant pays about $1200, amounting to $240,000. They acquire the boat for $50,000 and settle their accomplices with about $40,000, so in effect, they can get about $150,000 from each trip,” he disclosed.
Meanwhile, the Head of the Migration Management Bureau (MMB) of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), Chief Supt. (C/S) Pamela Codjo, blamed the strict visa regime and lack of information for irregular migration.
“I believe that one major cause of this menace is the strict visa regime because if the process is too rigid, that is when the connection men come in and lure unsuspecting people.
“The lack of information for prospective travellers to travel regularly is also accountable for this, because when people lack information about travelling right, anybody can lure them, lie to them and take them through any means to travel irregularly.
Way forward
On providing prospective migrants with relevant information, C/S Codjo said the MMB had stepped up its education mandate by undertaking outreaches at churches, schools, marketplaces and other social gatherings.
The move, according to her, was to encourage people to seek proper information before they travelled and to also avoid falling prey to fake recruitment agencies.
It is said that experience is the best teacher, and Mr Opoku Ware is living up to this as he has formed a non-governmental organisation (NGO) called Sahara Hustlers Association (SHA) to create awareness of the dangers of irregular migration.
He and his group have taken their sensitisation activities to second cycle institutions, the markets, fishing sites and other places.
Mr Opoku is of the view that the best way to tackle the menace is to put in place systems to discourage people from embarking on the journey, while at the same time cracking down on traffickers, smugglers and other middlemen.
Conclusion
Irregular migration is a cancerous canker that needs to be tackled by all countries, especially in the West African sub-region. The root cause of this is the desire to break away from the shackles of poverty.
If this canker is to be addressed, it is a call for governments in the sub-region to advance youth empowerment policies that will make young people believe that they can make it at home rather than putting their lives on the line.
It is also imperative for governments in the sub-region to take bold steps to create employment opportunities locally so that young people will not be pushed to go looking for it elsewhere.
