Planned child trafficking operation foiled by community members


AN operation conducted by the Eastern Regional Police Command last Saturday (27-04-2019) to rescue suspected trafficked children engaged in forced labour at Edrekpota, an island community along the Volta Lake at Afram Plains in the Eastern Region, was characterised by disbelief as all the children in the community, except babies had gone missing on the operation day.

The Eastern Regional Police Command had, through a recent undercover investigation, gathered with pictorial evidence, the existence of 24 trafficked children, including one girl, engaged in forced labour in the community.

The investigation had also revealed that the identified trafficked children, between the ages of 5 and 13, were suspected to be "owned" by 11 different boat masters residing in the community.

After embarking on a three-hour journey on the lake with the aim of going to rescue the suspected victims from bondage and apprehend perpetrators, the operations team, numbering about 15, arrived at the targeted community only to be received by groups of adults, including lactating mothers with all the children in the community surprisingly out of site.

It was gathered that the community members, had prior information about the unannounced swoop from an unknown source and succeeded in foiling the exercise by executing a counter plan which saw all the children there “go into hiding” in the morning of the operation day.

After close to two hours of interrogation, the team, made up of personnel from Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Police and the Navy, gave up the search as the community members who witnessed the swoop declined to show the whereabouts of the children.

They however, managed to apprehend nine of the eleven persons suspected to be involved in the illegal act for further interrogation on the matter.

Operation Ablorde
Trafficking children into forced labour contravenes the provisions of the Human Trafficking Act, 2005 (Act 694) and the United Nations Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (Palermo Protocol)  of which Ghana has assigned to.

For decades, communities along the Volta Lake have been identified as areas where cases of child trafficking are prevalent.

The Eastern Regional Police Command, had, as part of efforts to combat the menace, launched the Operation Ablorde (which means Freedom in Ewe) to crack down the perpetrators and rescue the victims.

Explaining the issues, the Deputy Public Relations Officer of the Eastern Regional Police Command, Sargent Francis Gomado stated that his outfit had picked intelligence that some children had being trafficked from Ningo, Ada and other distant locations along the coast to Edrekpota.

He said investigations into the matter had revealed that the suspected culprits had taken the children from their biological parents at a price and were engaging them in fishing activities on the Volta Lake.

“Our main objective for this operation was just to come and recue the children who had become victims of the illegal act,” he stated.
Peaceful exercise

The operation team arrived at the Edrekpota Landing Site around 12 noon and quickly entered the community to conduct the search.
Although the community members did not resist the exercise, they persistently demanded that the police officers explained to them the rationale behind the swoop, a demand that was ignored by the officers.

The wives of some of the suspects who were arrested rained curses and insults at the officers, who ignored the provocation and persisted in their search for the missing children.

When asked about the whereabouts of the children, the traditional leader of the community, Mr Seth Degbe Tsivanyo said “we were scared by your presence so all the children, together with some adults have gone into hiding.”

Upon realising that the community members were not willing to disclose the location of the children, the team quietly left the community with the nine suspects in custody for further interrogation.




  

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