The management of Challenging Heights, a Child's Right non-governmental organisation, has said there was child trafficking crisis in Ghana.
It therefore called on government to declare a national crisis on child trafficking, and put the police on a high alert to dismantle the trafficking syndicate.
A statement issued and signed by Mr James Kofi Annan, Executive Director said "we are curious that within the last one week, four
different suspected cases of child trafficking have been reported, and the number of children involved has been over 400, something which is
unprecedented in the country".
It said on July 30, 118 children on board three buses were intercepted by the police at Moree barrier near Cape Coast, a couple of days earlier, two suspects were arrested for trafficking 50 children from the Upper East Region to the southern part of Ghana.
"Another case, which promises to be the largest single case of suspected children trafficking, involved 248 children in three different buses which were intercepted in the Greater Accra Region on Sunday, August 1.
"As a country, we cannot take these occurrences for granted, especially as there seem to be a pattern in all these cases. We believe
that there is a business syndicate behind these trafficking cases. What is worrying is the fact that the phenomena is across the entire country,
from Bolgatanga to Cape Coast, with more unreported cases," the statement said.
The management commended the Police for their effort in apprehending some of the suspected perpetrators, "we believe that a
deeper investigation should be conducted to unravel the network behind these crimes".
It said in almost all the cases, the police released the suspects and handed over the children to their parents and "this gives us course for concern".
"We have no doubt that the police efforts to crack down on child trafficking are being hindered due to a lack of resources. Part of the
problems has to do with the absence of logistics and shelters to house these children and feed them pending investigations," the statement
added.
It said Challenging Heights could understand the frustration of the Police in their bid to seek justice and punish child trafficking offenders when there was no infrastructure and logistics to help the rescued children.
"It is in this light that we are calling on the government to declare a child trafficking crisis, provide the police with a crisis fund, and to put the police on a high alert in order to break the syndicate behind the trafficking of the children," the statement added.
The Human Trafficking Act requires the Ministry of Women and Children's Affairs to set up shelters for the victims of the trafficking but
this requirement has not been fulfilled. Almost no shelters have been constructed under the act.
It said in the face of all these difficulties, the NGO still had a lot of
confidence in the Police to conduct thorough investigations and urged the Police to look for suspects from both far and near.
The management expressed concern about the reaction of Mr Alfred Abayateye, the Member of Parliament for Sege, who was reported to
have said it was normal for the 248 children to be sent to Yeji for various purposes.
"This statement from the Parliamentarian is disappointing and ill-advised. At the same time, it is instructive that the Police could begin
their investigations with him by questioning his knowledge on where these children are usually taken to, how many times this has happened under his watchful eyes, who recruits or organises these children, and what benefits comes to him or those involved in organizing the children into those buses. We should not ignore his statement since that has the potential of helping the Police to get to the bottom of the case reported,
"it added.