President John Dramani Mahama has appointed Daniel Julius Avorga, as Coordinator of government’s anti-human trafficking activities.
Daniel Avorga who is a former Deputy Commissioner of Police, is expected to develop more sophisticated means of fighting human trafficking in the country.
Recommended articles
Avorga who is a former Deputy Commissioner of Police, and also a former Director of Legal Services of the Ghana Police Service, is expected to develop more sophisticated means of fighting human trafficking in the country.
In a 2015 US report on trafficking across the globe, Ghana was ranked at tier 2 putting it on a watch list. This is because it did not meet the minimum standards for combating trafficking.
The US Ambassador to Ghana Robert Jackson said Ghana’s inaction could lead to losing of funds from the US.
Parliamentarians have also expressed similar concern and over the period called on the government to provide enough logistics for the fight against human trafficking.
Meanwhile the Members of Parliament have also encouraged the security agencies and other stakeholders responsible for fighting human trafficking to use the current limited resources to the best of their ability.
Ghana has been named as a source, transit and destination country people subjected to forced labour and sex trafficking.
“Ghanaian boys and girls are subjected to forced labour within the country in fishing, domestic service, street hawking, begging, artisanal gold mining, and agriculture. Ghanaian girls, and to a lesser extent boys, are subjected to prostitution within Ghana. Child prostitution is prevalent in the Volta Region and is growing in the oil-producing Western regions.”
The report also mentioned some destinations the trafficked victims are taken to. “Ghanaian women and children are recruited and transported primarily to Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, The Gambia, South Africa, Israel, Syria, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States for forced labor and forced prostitution.”