Mr. Alfred Mbinglo, Executive Director of Research and Counselling Foundation for African Migrants (RECFAM), has expressed worry about the manner in which irregular migrants suffer abroad due to lack of proper travelling documents.<\/p>\n
He said most of such migrants embarked on their journeys through unapproved routes, causing some of them deaths, forced labour, drug addiction, torture, sexual abuse and other forms of maltreatment especially when caught travelling through the desert.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mbinglo was speaking at a one-day sensitization forum for students of Akumfi Ameyaw Senior High School (SHS) at Aworowa in the Techiman Municipality at the weekend.
The workshop, under the theme, \u201cInformation Campaign Activities to Discourage Irregular Migration and Promote Legal Migration\u201d, was aimed among other things at creating awareness of the dangers involved in travelling outside Ghana without requisite or necessary documents.<\/p>\n
The programme was sponsored by the European Union (EU) and organised by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in collaboration with the Government of Ghana (GoG), RECFAM\/Scholars In Transit (SIT) and other local stakeholders.<\/p>\n
Mr. Mbinglo advised people who wanted to travel outside the country to approach RECFAM\/SIT or other legal and recognized travelling agents to obtain genuine relevant documents, rather than dealing with middlemen or contractors who only swindled them after receiving colossal sums of money.<\/p>\n
The Reverend Francis Peprah Twumasi, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SIT, said the programme initiated by RECFAM and SIT had covered Nkoranza Senior High School, Nkoranza Technical Institute, Churches, and traditional authorities in a joint workshop in Techiman.
Rev. Twumasi said it was hoped that the programme would be of benefit to the youth, especially those wishing to travel under tourism programmes.<\/p>\n
Mr. Gilbert Kesse Labib, Techiman Municipal Coordinator of National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO), said the government had put in place a proper mechanism to forestall illegal migration adding that a 13-member committee had been set up for that purpose.
Mr. Labib recalled the recent atrocities and crisis in Libya, saying \u201cthis should be a wake-up call for any Ghanaian traveller not to dream of travelling outside the country through the desert\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mr. Lawrence Akakpo, an Immigration Service Department (ISD) Officer of the Techiman Municipal Assembly, who spoke on the topic, \u201cAcquisition of Passport and Relevant Documents\u201d, advised prospective travellers abroad to present their passports to his outfit for processing and not to fake contractors.<\/p>\n
He noted that prospective travellers abroad who were in haste and did not follow the regular immigration procedures but rather used fake passport and visa contractors were those who suffered atrocities such as arrest, imprisonment and eventual repatriation back home, when they were caught.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mr. Alfred Mbinglo, Executive Director of Research and Counselling Foundation for African Migrants (RECFAM), has expressed worry about the manner in which irregular migrants suffer abroad due to lack of proper travelling documents. He said most of such migrants embarked on their journeys through unapproved routes, causing some of them deaths, forced labour, drug addiction, torture, sexual abuse and other forms of maltreatment especially when caught travelling through the desert<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard"],"yoast_head":"\n