Byelaw on loitering needed to check sexual exploitation of kids

Accra, Aug. 17, GNA - A report on sexual exploitation of young boys in tourism has called for byelaws that would restrict children from loitering during the day and at night.

According to the report, the number of young boys being sexually exploited, mostly by tourists were on the increase and such byelaws would give the children protection and keep them away from such exploiters.

Ghana NGOs Coalition on the Rights of a Child (GNCRC) conducted the study aimed at assessing the prevalence, magnitude, character and consequences of child sex tourism. The study disseminated on Thursday in Accra was conducted in the areas of Osu and La with specific sites such as hotels, restaurants, bars, nightclubs and La Pleasure Beach had 86 respondents aged between 10 years and 17 years.

It revealed that some tourists engaged in both homosexual and heterosexual acts for a fee, which victims used for clothes and food. Mr Edmund Acquaye, Research Coordinator of GNCRC noted that most of the respondents had tourists as friends and 24 per cent of the respondents indicated that their clients were foreigners and 12 per cent were locals.

"Further enquiries revealed that the majority of the respondents started this kind of work earlier in life and were introduced into it by friends or through their own curiosity."

The study reported that most parents interviewed had little or no knowledge about the activities their children were engaged in while other parents forced their children into it to get money for the survival of the family.

It recommended that existing laws and policies to protect children must be enforced and implemented respectively and also called for a strong networking among all security agencies to help to track tourists, who engaged in those immoral acts.

Mrs Susan Sabaah, the National Coordinator of GNCRC, said the Government, the security agencies, hotels, restaurants and resorts should also support the effective enforcement of child protection laws. She called on the Ministry of Education, Sports and Science to ensure the effective implementation of the Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education to ensure that every child stayed in school.

Mrs Bridget Katsriku, Chief Director of the Ministry of Tourism and Diasporan Relations, who chaired the function, called for a review of the Ghanaian culture that says: "Children must be seen and not heard" so they could come out freely to report when they were sodomised or sexually exploited not only by foreigners but local people as well.

She appealed to parents and communities to exhibit some responsibilities by reporting perpetrators of such acts to the law enforcement agencies for prosecution.