‘Let’s act collectively to combat human trafficking’
The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection has reviewed the human trafficking national plan of action to address the practice in the country.
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In pursuance of the objective, various regional units of the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) have been opened to combat trafficking in persons.
The ministry is also running educational campaigns, engaging in advocacy and capacity-building programmes within trafficking-prone communities and coordinating the implementation of the Child Protection Compact Agreement which was signed between the government and the United States.
The acting Director of the Trafficking Secretariat of the Gender Ministry, Mrs Victoria Natsu, announced this at the opening of a three-day workshop on human trafficking for law enforcement agencies in Accra yesterday.
She said the Ministry had also passed the Human Trafficking Prohibition Regulations 2015, LI 2219, and established the Human Trafficking Management Board (HTMB).
She added that the Gender Policy, the Child and Family Welfare Policy and the Social Protection Policy were interventions by the ministry to protect women, children and the vulnerable.
More efforts needed
Mrs Natsu called for improvement in prevention, protection, prosecution and partnership to combat human trafficking in the country.
According to her, globally, 60 per cent of victims of trafficking were women, while in Africa and Ghana, 70 per cent were children.
She emphasised that no country was immune to human trafficking, for which reason there was the need for collective effort to curb it.
She urged the participants to rise up to the occasion and intensify their efforts to combat human trafficking in the country.
Inhumane act
In his welcome address, the Deputy Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Police Service, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Mr Denis Akobdem Abade, described human trafficking as modern-day slavery.
In addition, he said, victims of human trafficking were robbed of their human dignity and future development.
“It is certainly one of the most heinous crimes that can be perpetrated by any person against his or her fellow human being,” he stressed.
