"Arrest those involved in child trafficking" - Veep

Vice President Aliu Mahama on Thursday asked the security agencies and legal personnel to focus on eliminating child trafficking and other life-threatening forms of child labour, which destroy the normal development of the victims and impede national progress.

Speaking at a ceremony in Accra at which he launched the National Programme On Combating the Trafficking of Children For Labour Exploitation, Alhaji Mahama said Laws on Child Trafficking had been included in the Draft Labour Bill that would soon be presented to Parliament.

Alhaji Mahama also inaugurated an 18-member Taskforce with members from requisite public institutions and non-governmental organisation to work towards eliminating the trafficking of children.

He said the government would complement the enforcement of laws by raising the incomes of families, through the poverty reduction strategy and other credit schemes, to take better care of their children since poverty had been identified as the underlying cause of child trafficking.

Alhaji Mahama asked the taskforce to design imaginative programmes to sensitise, educate and inform Ghanaians on the existence of the issue and its negative impact on the individual, the family and the nation.

Ghana is a major supplier of children for exploitative labour internally and for the West and Central sub-regional markets, according a yearlong study by the African Centre for Human Development.

The study, sponsored by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), said children of usually poor parents were lured, coerced, or bought from their guardians or parents by recruiters who sent them through intermediaries for sale to employers.

Bolgatanga, Tamale, Wa, Ningo, Ada, Winneba and rural communities, particularly in northern Ghana were identified as some of the supply points whereas Sunyani, Accra, Kumasi, the Afram Plains, Dzemeni, Kpando Torkor, towns along the Volta Lake and some urban towns provide markets.

Some of the children are sent Togo, Cote d'Ivoire and Burkina Faso. The study said trafficked children were engaged in risky and exploitative labour, including commercial sex, domestic work, work on farms and plantations, illegal mining, fishing, trading and begging.

The hazardous nature of their jobs and the conditions under which they worked exposed them to physical and psychological abuse, violence, sexually transmitted diseases and other health risks and left them with no education, basic training or skills.

They, therefore, perpetuate the vicious cycle of poverty started by their parents and were unable to contribute meaningfully towards national development, the report said.