Eight girls were rescued after being trafficked into Ghana to engage in commercial sex, with seven of them being allowed to return to Nigeria.
After identifying the victims’ families in Nigeria, the Ghana Police Service and the Cape Coast office of the Social Welfare Department carried out the restitution through the International Organization for Migration.
The young girls, aged 15 to 22, were trafficked into Ghana under the guise of securing white-collar jobs to help them improve their living conditions.
Two of the girls were rescued in Diaso, the capital of the Upper Denkyira West District, three in Mfantseman Municipality, and three in the Central Region’s Assin South Municipality.
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr. Alexander Ofosu Yeboah, the Unit Head in charge of the Department’s Children’s Residential Home, said that human trafficking cases were most prevalent during vacations.
He claimed that the perpetrators misled the victims, who were secondary school girls, into believing that they would be provided with basic necessities and given jobs that would change their lives and make them comfortable.
Mr. Yeboah stated that the reparation became possible after the victims gathered intelligence and reported their plight after realizing they had been duped.
According to him, the Department provided shelter for the victims during their stay in Ghana until they were identified and returned to their home country.
“The guilty parties, all Nigerians, are on the run, with the exception of one female, who was apprehended and sentenced to five years in prison with hard labor.”Mr. Yeboah claims.
He claimed that the problem was prevalent in the region’s mining, farming, and fishing areas, where some trafficked girls engaged in sexual activities for their masters.
Mr. Yeboah reminded the public that human trafficking was inhumane and had a negative impact on victims’ futures and that it required collective efforts to stop or reduce it.
“Laws governing human trafficking must be strictly enforced in order to deter perpetrators from participating in the act,” he said.
Concerning the Department’s challenges, Mr. Yeboah stated that perpetrators of human trafficking were mostly freed or released due to the 48-hour limit on keeping offenders in police custody.
He stated that because the majority of the perpetrators were foreigners, bail was not guaranteed because they did not have relatives or family members in the country to stand in for them.
As a result, Mr. Yeboah urged the government to either extend the 48-hour limit for trafficking perpetrators or pass legislation requiring them to appear in court immediately after arrest.
