A lot has been accomplished, according to the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (MoGCSP), in terms of the recovery and punishment of those involved in human trafficking and unauthorized immigration.

The MoGCSP asserted that, the number of investigations increased from 87 in 2020 to 108 in 2021.

Similarly to this, the overall prosecutions went from 13 to 22, while the total victims went from 587 to 831.

This was disclosed last Wednesday by the MoGCSP's designate minister, Lariba Zuweira Abudu, at the beginning of a three-day training session for law enforcement officials in Kumasi on counter-trafficking and irregular migration.

Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, trading or receipt of persons within and across national borders by the use of threats, force or other forms of coercion, abduction and fraud among others.

Capacity building

The three-day workshop was held in collaboration with Expertise France, with financial support from the European Union (EU) on the theme: “Combating human trafficking and irregular migration in Ghana”, and aimed at equipping officers to effectively implement the Human Traffic Act 2005 (Act 694).

The beneficiaries, drawn from across the country, were trained in human rights issues, victim identification, rescue operation, victim protection, investigation, building dockets, among others, to bring them to speed on modern ways in handling human-trafficking issues.

They were selected from the Ghana Revenue Authority-Customs Division, the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Immigration Service and the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO).

Madam Abudu said the feats were made possible through regular education, law enforcement and awareness creation.

Monitoring

For his part, the Project Manager, Expertise France, Serge Akpalou, said throughout the year, monitoring visits were conducted across the country and its borders to understand the state of affairs on the menace and to effectively tackle the issue at hand.

He said so far, over 375 officers had been trained and 80 other officers had also benefited from an advanced level training programme.