Daboase (W/R), July 5, GNA- Mr John Hackman, Western Regional Director of the Department of Children, on Thursday said Ghana has been documented as a source, transit and destination for women and children trafficked for sexual exploitation and forced domestic and commercial labour.

He was speaking at the regional celebration of this year's Africa Union (AU) Day of the African Child under the theme "Combating Child Trafficking" at Daboase in the Mpohor Wassa East District. The Department of Children organised the celebration in collaboration with the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF) and Support For Community Mobilization Project and Program (SCMPP), a non-governmental organisation at Daboase.

Mr Hackman said traffickers have used Ghana as a transit country for trafficking of people mostly women from Asia to America and Europe. He said Ghanaian children are trafficked internally for fishing on the Volta Lake, domestic work, street vending and the hospitality industry in big cities.

Mr Hackman said Ghanaian children are also trafficked across the borders to La Cote d'ivoire, Togo, Gabon, Nigeria and the Gambia for forced labour.

Mr Hackman said researches had revealed that there is also internal trafficking of children from poor rural communities to urban areas for domestic work, commercial activities, street hawking and prostitution. He said child trafficking for labour exploitation infringes on the rights of the child victims and denies them the right to proper development and threatens them with life long poverty.

Mr Hackman said most victims of child trafficking are not given the opportunity to go to school, while those engaged in hazardous labour stand the risk of injuring themselves for life or facing death from the dangers they encounter in their work.

He said the threat to the children's education and development has direct implications for Ghana's manpower development and growth in the long term.

"The trafficking in humans also contravenes Ghana's constitution and other laws". Mr Hackman said poverty cannot be used as an excuse for parents to sell their children for labour exploitation or slavery and it was to avert this that the government instituted the Capitation Grant, which has made basic education fee-free.

"Also the school feeding programme, free bus services for school children and poverty alleviation component of the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy all some of the efforts of government to halt child trafficking".

He said any parent or intermediary who traffic's in children would be prosecuted under the Human Trafficking Act, which stipulates a summary conviction to imprisonment for a term of not less than five years.

Mr Hackman said the government has already taken several important steps to combat child trafficking and has ratified the International Labour Organisation's Forced labour Convention, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Human Trafficking Act.

Mr Agyapa Buah, Director of SCMPP, said the NGO is implementing a project, which is code named Yen Daakye (YDK) to check child exploitation in cocoa growing areas with financial and technical support from the International Cocoa Initiative of Geneva and the Participatory Development Associates Limited of Kumasi.

He said the major objective of the project is to support the government's policy of eliminating the worst forms of child labour in cocoa growing and processing communities.

Mr Buah said a study conducted by SCMPP indicated that three children, mostly from the northern regions, are trafficked into the district every six months.

He said the practice is so disguised that it is difficult to identify the perpetrators who are fully backed by some community members, and even some unscrupulous teachers are involved in the distribution process.

Mr Buah said the child is usually promised education but they rather end up on the farms or trading at the market and domestic labour. Mr Benjamin Whyte, Regional Population Officer, who presided said child trafficking is bad and should be condemned by all. He urged the public to report those involved in child trafficking to the security agencies.

Mr Whyte said children are the country's future leaders and urged all to ensure that the practice is stopped.