Minister for Gender, Children and Social Protection, Nana Oye Lithur, has admitted the government is faced with challenges in dealing with the menace of human trafficking in the country.

She noted despite the challenges, the government is working hard to address the menace which she attributed to migration, poor development, unemployment and poverty. A 2016 Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report puts Ghana in tier 2 Watch List country.

This means the government does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking in persons. It also suggests government has failed to provide evidence of increasing efforts to combating severe forms of trafficking in the past year.

Commenting on the report on TV3’s New Day Monday, Nana Oye Lithur said that the government has put in place numerous measures to help curb the problem of human Trafficking. Among such measures are the construction of a national victim shelter, the training of 35 police officers to fight human trafficking and the creation of a committee to investigate the issue of human trafficking.

Nana Oye Lithur also said the Attorney General in collaboration with the Ghana Police Service has reviewed all pending dockets of human trafficking cases, noting “This will help scale up persecution of culprits”.

She debunked allegations that her Ministry has failed to fight the menace of human trafficking. “The legal structures are working but there is a need to review the structures in place, thus the ministry’s involvement to review agencies that recruit Ghanaians to work abroad, especially in the Middle East’’, Nana Oye Lithur said.