Child Trafficking on the Volta Lake - 12 year old boy tells story

A 12-year old victim of child trafficking on the Volta Lake has revealed that he was offered to a boat master by his mother two years ago to enable her garner money to pay for the release of his father who was in police custody for assaulting his own brother.

Kwame (not his real name), the eldest of five children, was among 13 other suspected trafficked children engaged in forced labour on the Volta Lake who were rescued by the police Monday dawn (29-04-2019).

Recounting his ordeal to Eddiesdailies yeaterday (Tuesday, 30-04-2019), he recalled that his father was caught in a brawl with his uncle one morning at a community within Ningo where they resided.

The row, he said, culminated with the exchange of blows between his father and his uncle during which the former “wounded” the latter on his face.

He stated that the matter was reported to the police after which his father, a farmer, was arrested and detained.

Days later, he said his mother, a petty trader, suggested that he went to assist the boat master (name withheld) in his fishing activities on the lake to enable her get some money to settle an unspecified amount being demanded by his uncle to avert the prosecution of his father.

“I was afraid that if I did not agree to my mother’s suggestion, my father would be jailed and I might not be able to see him again,” Kwame said.

According to him, although he did not witness his boat master offer any amount to his mother, the agreement reached between them landed him at Edrekpota, an island community along the Volta 

 Lake at Afram Plains in the Eastern Region.

He said that two years after being separated from his parents, none of them had come to pay him a visit at the island community.

When asked if he had ever inquired from his master when he would be taken to his parents, he said “I never did for fear of being scolded.”

“I want to reunite with my family. I want to go back to school and grow to become a teacher,” he stated.

Background

The Eastern Regional Police Command had, through a recent undercover investigation, gathered with pictorial evidence, the existence of 24 trafficked children, engaged in forced labour on the Volta Lake by 11 separate boat masters.

A joint swoop (dubbed Operation Ablorde) was conducted by the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the police and the navy at Edrekpota last Saturday (April 27, 2019) to rescue the 24 suspected trafficked children.

When the operations team arrived at the community, all the children there had surprisingly gone into hiding but they managed to apprehend nine out of the eleven persons suspected to be involved in the trafficking of the children for further interrogation.

The police however, intercepted a bus at Atimpoku in the Eastern Region on Monday (29-04-2019) that was reportedly transporting 13 of the 24 suspected trafficked children back to their hometowns.

When asked after the rescue why they went into hiding during last Saturday’s swoop, some of the rescued children said “we were told that some people would come for us, take us to an unknown destination and draw our blood for rituals so we had to flee for our dear lives.”