(The Crusading Guide) - The Acting Minister of Tourism, Hon Kwamena Bartels has disclosed that plans and activities have been earmarked to ensure that as from next year, all descendants of the Slave Trade become and feel like royals. In view of this, “We are packaging a Special Emancipation Day Pilgrimage, which would constitute mainly people of the black heritage in the Diaspora,” he added.

Spelling out the format of the pilgrimage which would be dubbed: “The Return Pilgrimage,” the Minister intimated that: “Participants would be put on boats, on the sea, and rolled back to the entrance of the dungeons of the castle, their ancestors exited into slavery, and the time they will enter and come out again.”

“We will be flown to Tamale, and then driven to Paga, from where with buses, we will come back to the slave sites,” we will come back to the slave sites,” he continued. According to the Acting Minister, this is added to the already selected Slave Trade historical sites “in order to make the visitor have more value for money and infuse cost effectiveness into the whole tour pattern.”

Delivering a statement on the occasion of the Media Launch of Emancipation Day 2002, during which he made those disclosures, Mr Bartels stated that, “the celebration in July/August marks the anniversary of the 1834 British Government declaration, which offered freedom to all cattle slaves in the British colonies.”

Activities lined-up for this year’s celebration include visitation to historical sites, pilgrimage to Assin Praso, beach programme at La Beach, wreath laying ceremonies, and reverential nights. A Martyrs Day at Assin Manso and a visit to the slave river in order to pay respect to tombs of Crystal and Carson whose skeletons were buried in Ghana, would also be in the programme line-up.

Reiterating government’s declared Golden Age of Business, Mr Bartels hoped that the public sector will withdraw from the areas where it is not competent to perform and make way for the private sector, the engine of growth of the economy to step in. He urged members of the media, to ensure that information on the Emancipation Day Celebrations is effectively and widely disseminated, to allow Ghanaians to know when to join in the celebrations.