A special joint operation by the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service and its partners has led to rescue of 116 children, aged between four and 17, from communities along the Volta Lake.
The partners who took part in the operation on Wednesday are Interpol Ghana, the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO), The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, the Immigration Service and the Partners in Community Development (PACODEP), a Krachi-based NGO working to integrate trafficked children into communities along the Volta Lake.
After the Children had been screened it was discovered that 15 of them had been trafficked from the Central, Greater Accra and Eastern Regions and the Southern part of the Volta Region.
Thirty men who had engaged the Children in fishing activities at the time of the operation were also arrested and prosecuted. Twenty-eight of them were sentenced to 16 months imprisonment each by the Krachi West Magistrate Court.
They pleaded guilty to counts of counts of exposing children to danger and engaging minors in hazardous activities and were convicted to eight months each on each count.
The court presided over by Mr Emmanuel Davis, remanded two others who pleaded not guilty in prison custody to reappear in two weeks.
The decision of the court incurred the displeasure of relatives of the convicts. The rescue operation, which lasted about, was met with resistance from some of the fishermen while others ordered their children to run into the bush on arrival of the rescue team.
The Director of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service, Superintendent Patience Quaye, who supervised the operation, told the Daily Graphic that the exercise had been successful.
Source: Daily Graphic
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