THE Volta Regional Director of the Department of Children, Mr Edwin Gamadeku, has charged Ghanaians to translate the immense support for the Black Stars at the World Cup tournament into equal support for the elimination of child trafficking and domestic violence.
He said various methods were used in perpetrating those crimes, including abduction, force, outright sales of children for token fees and bonded placement to atone for various offences committed by their relatives for which the children did not know anything about.
Mr Gamadeku said this at a community sensitisation forum against child-trafficking at Agotime-Afegame in the Adaklu-Anyigbe District, Volta Region, last Saturday.
He said some perpetrators adopted children under the guise of training them in employable skills but eventually ended up in selling them to other people.
That, he said, was possible because of ignorance on the part of parents and guardians, the high demand for cheap labour, inadequate border controls, domestic violence and harmful cultural practices.
“A nation that allows its children to be exploited is doomed,” Mr Gamadeku stated, adding that it was for that reason that the government was committed to the fulfilment of United Nations conventions that sought to promote and protect the welfare of children.
He, therefore, enjoined all stakeholders to join the crusade on the elimination of the crime because anybody who had knowledge of the crime was liable and guilty as an allied perpetrator of the crime.
In a welcoming address read on his behalf, the chief of Afegame, Nene Mahumansro XII, said the emergence of child-trafficking was counterproductive and an indictment on the ethics of the forefathers who insisted that children were granted freedom until their parents had guaranteed their security.
He pledged the support of the people to the government to help stamp out child-trafficking, stressing that the community would ensure that nobody in the neighbourhood engaged in the crime.
Nene Mahumansro, however, called for support to make the work of the committees more effective, suggesting that cottage industries in rural areas might help eradicate child-trafficking, stressing that “child-trafficking and domestic violence are tantamount to poverty.”
A puppet show was displayed to schoolchildren from schools in neighbouring Republic of Togo and Afegame.
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