'Ban children below 15 from travelling unaccompanied'

Long-distance drivers have called for a regulation to bar children below 15 years from travelling long distances unaccompanied.

They contended that that would curtail the high level of child trafficking and strictly enforce the Human Trafficking Act.

Long-distance drivers, particularly those who travel from the northern part of the country to the south, are often used by human traffickers to transport children to the south to engage in child labour.

Causes of rural-urban drift

At a day’s sensitisation seminar for long-distance drivers at the Agbogbloshie Market in Accra, the drivers identified unemployment, poverty and large family sizes among the major causes of the rural-urban drift, particularly for  young people.

They expressed the belief that if the government enforced the Free, Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) policy and backed it with commitment, child trafficking would be reduced to the lowest minimum, if not completely eliminated.

Sensitisation seminar

The seminar, organised by the Centre for Development Initiative (CDI), was attended by drivers from the various drivers unions who ply long distances, particularly between the north and the south of the country.

The drivers were educated on what the Human Trafficking Act entailed, especially on drivers being used as conduits to transport underage children to be engaged in the worse forms of hard labour and how they could avoid getting into conflict with the law.

Vigilance 

Addressing the drivers, a lecturer at the GIMPA School of Law, Mr Tuinese Edward Amusu, told them that ignorance of the law was not an excuse.

He advised them to exercise a high level of diligence to avoid falling foul of the law.

Mr Amusu advised that whenever they had good reasons to suspect that children in their vehicles could be victims of human trafficking, they should make a report to the nearest police station or authority.

 “You need to know who is on board your vehicle, even for the sake of security,” he told the drivers, and urged them not to allow themselves to be used to transport children from the north to the south to engage in child labour.

The Executive Director of the CDI, Mr Alexis Danikuu Dery expressed worry over the increasing rate of child labour, particularly in the cities, and said his organisation had proposed to engage with some district and municipal assemblies to find a lasting solution to the problem.

Mr Dery said his organisation had identified the Adentan and Madina Municipal areas in the Greater Accra Region as the recipients of trafficked children, while the Sisaala West District in the Upper West Region was a supply source of trafficked children.