A programme which aims to assist and return to their families more than 1,200 children, " the Fishing Boys," trafficked for forced labour in the Central and Volta regions of Ghana is making good progress.

To date, staff from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) in Yeji and Atebubu districts of Brong Ahafo region have successfully registered 814 children who are currently employed under slave-like conditions in numerous fishing communities established along the shores and on islands scattered on Lake Volta.

The victims, mostly boys aged between 5 and 14, are forced to work from dawn to dusk casting and drawing nets.

They live separately in cramped thatched roofed huts, are poorly fed, suffer physical abuse and never get paid. Their diet consists mainly of cassava with atery soup, IOM reports.

Most of them suffer from water born illnesses and experience stunted growth. In one location alone, an island in the middle of Lake Volta, dozens of slave children are marooned in " Accra Town", a fishing settlement with no electricity or running water.

In this settlement, IOM had collected testimonies that at least five children have recently drowned trying to release nets caught on the bottom of the lake. In " Accra Town", the children are employed by local fishermen, known as "slave master".

One employer, who has been in the business for 10 years, told IOM, he had recently paid 5 million cedis (US$570) for nine children he currently use.

According to IOM's Dr. Ernest Taylor, employers are well aware that it is wrong to employ children, but use them because they are " easier to control and obey orders, however dangerous the work."

In order to identify slave children and trace their families, IOM staff is carrying out interviews with the employers. So far, 136 one-to-one interviews have been completed in the communities of Tonka, Jakalai, Kadue, Jyatakpo and Blekente, located in the Atebubu and Yeji Districts.

Last week, Yeji's paramount Chief "Nana" Kagbeeresi called upon all fishermen to release all of the fishing boys so as not to deprive them an education or other vocational training opportunities offered by the programme.

This programme, implemented with the Ghanaian authorities, the ILO, Catholic Relief Service and the local non-governmental organisation APPLE, aims to return to their families more than 1,200 children who have been trafficked into forced labour.