NO EXCUSE FOR CHILD TRAFFICKING

PRESENT-DAY economic hardships are forcing individuals and families to resort to various means of survival, whether fair or foul.
At the moment, child trafficking seems to be the easiest way out for some parents and individuals. Each passing day, children are taken away either by parental consent or forcibly to places far away from their homes to engage in back-breaking tasks.
Parents give away their children some as young as five years for a pittance with promises from the traffickers of good education and apprenticeship in chosen trades. Often they turn out to be mere promises.
Once the deals are sealed and the children handed over to the traffickers, they are made to literally live through hell — some are used to beg for alms for their masters, others as farmhands and yet others are made to work in deep waters on the Volta Lake.
The issue of child trafficking is gradually becoming a menace, seemingly overshadowing the efforts to curb it. In recent times, there have been some efforts to redeem the children from their masters and reunite them with their parents while some form of financial assistance has been given to their parents to enable them to engage in income-generating activities so they can take care of their children.
However, as has become too common in Ghana nowadays, many people are still chasing the elusive “get rich quick” attitude and the practice seems to have gained more grounds.
What is more worrying now is the fact that the practice, which used to be common along the coastal belt and the predominant farming areas, is fast becoming a cross-border business.
Barely a week of reporting the arrest of six men who tried to transport 17 children from Garu in the Upper East Region to Cote d’Ivoire, there is another incident, again in the Western Region, as the police intercepted a bus loaded with 155 children being taken to Anlotuape in Cote d’Ivoire to work as farmhands or help either the fishermen or fishmongers.
While the DAILY GRAPHIC commends the Western Regional Police for their vigilance, we still are compelled to believe that much is not being done to make this practice unattractive.
For, how can anyone explain how the children from Garu were brought all the way from the Upper East Region to the Western Region without any of the security agencies on that route noticing them?
There must be a more proactive way to send the message that, as a country, we are determined to curb this menace, and it is the responsibility of the law enforcement agencies to come together to fight it. Arresting the culprits is not enough.
They must be prosecuted in the fastest time possible, given stiff sentences that will deter others from engaging in that dehumanising act.
Stories are told of how in the past, parents sold their jewellery and other personal belongings to enable them see their children through school and these children who appreciated what their parents did, have become responsible adults in respectable professions and in a better position to give back to their parents, what they invested in them. Ironically, the tables have turned and some parents think the best way of survival is to sell their children.
The DAILY GRAPHIC appreciates the fact that things are pretty tough for some people and most of them are at their wits’ end to provide decent living for themselves and their dependants. But selling children for economic benefits is a very simplistic way of dealing with the present-day challenges.
The rate of child trafficking is increasing and society needs to make concerted efforts now to fight it — parents, family members, the community and, most important, the state as well as security apparatus, to nip this menace in the bud.