Prosecute persons involved in human trafficking

Page 47
July 3, 2008

THE Director of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), Ms Elizabeth Adjei, has called for the effective prosecution of persons involved in human trafficking.
According to her, only one prosecution had been successful so far, although the immigration service and police had made a number of arrests, adding that last year alone, the service intercepted 26 persons who were being trafficked.
“The Human Trafficking Act, Act 694, can only be implemented to the letter, if arrests made by the police, immigration and the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) are successfully prosecuted,” she said.
Ms Adjei stated this at an Anti-Human Trafficking Training and Capacity Building Workshop for Law Enforcement Professionals in Ghana in Accra.
The three-day workshop aims, among other things, at ensuring effective collaboration and networking between the security agencies and the Attorney General’s Department.
Ms Adjei said about 700,000 people were trafficked annually, while the International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimated in its global report that $32 billion was generated annually through the exploitation of men, women and children.
“The crimes associated with trafficking sometimes include such horrific acts as detention, rape and torture, which violate human rights and undermine national and international security,” she stated, saying that “people are recruited in a variety of ways through the promise of good jobs only to find that they are in debt to traffickers and thus obliged to work for little or no remuneration”.
The Deputy Director General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), ACP Ken Yeboah, who stressed the need for effective networking among the security agencies in the fight against human trafficking also called for joint investigative mechanism among the agencies.
He said there should be joint operations both locally and internationally, since human trafficking was fast gaining grounds in the sub-region and elsewhere.
He said the training programmes on human trafficking would equip law enforcement agents with the requisite skills aimed at fighting the canker, especially child trafficking.
A Child Protection Specialist at UNICEF, Mr Eric Appiah Okrah, underscored the need for all to join the fight against human trafficking, since it was not the responsibility of the government alone.
“We all have a responsibility towards people who are vulnerable,” he asserted and called for better collaboration among the agencies in the fight against human trafficking.