Slavery Aborted : Police Save 118 Children

Shirley Asiedu-Addo



Three buses loaded with 118 children allegedly being trafficked to Half Assini in the Western Region were intercepted by the Central Regional Police Command at the Moree Barrier, near Cape Coast, yesterday morning.

The children, aged between three and 15, were being transported from Narkwa and Eku Mpoano in the Central Region on the three Benz buses, with registration numbers CR 782 09, GR 1006 T and GN 4231 Y, when the police pounced on the buses upon a tip off.

Twenty-four women on the vehicles and the three drivers were detained, along with the children at the Central Regional Police Headquarters in Cape Coast.

The Regional Police Public Relations Officer, Mr Raymond Asaaba, told the press that the police intercepted the vehicles because they suspected that the children were being trafficked to the Western Region to work in dangerous conditions for money.

He noted that it was an offence to engage children in perilous working conditions and said if investigations proved that the children were being trafficked, the police would take the next action of prosecuting the suspected offenders.

But one of the drivers of the intercepted vehicles, Mohammed Sagoe, denied that the children were being taken away to be engaged in hard labour.

He said the children lived with relatives at Narkwa and Eku Mpoano, where they attended school, but had been organised for holidays in Half Assini to assist their parents, who were mostly fishermen and fishmongers, with their fishing activities during the vacation.

He said the children usually engaged in that type of vacation practice until about three days to the re-opening of their schools when they were transported back to the Central Region to continue with their schooling.

Mr Asaaba said the police would commandeer the vehicles back to Narkwa and Eku Mpoano with a team of policemen to conduct further investigations, after which the police would take the next course of action.

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