Bright Agyapong and Kweku Arkon in police custody
The Anti Human Trafficking Unit of the Police Criminal Investigation Department (CID) has apprehended two men who allegedly masterminded the trafficking of six children and selling them to some slave masters in the Volta Region and Saudi Arabia.
The suspects are 47-year-old Bright Agyapong and Kweku Arkon, 32 years.
They are in custody of the police assisting in investigations.
Five of the children – from the ages of nine to 19 years – who have been rescued, have been provided with shelter by the police while efforts were being made to get the sixth victim – a girl of 25 years, now in Saudi Arabia – sent back to her family in Ghana.
Information gathered indicated that the children were sold to their slave masters, mostly fishermen, at a cost of GH¢500 per head.
This business, according to reports, seems lucrative to some parents living along the coastal areas in the Volta Region as they purportedly sell their children to the fishermen for a living.
The trafficked children being rescued
Briefing the media, Chief Superintendent Felix Mawusi, Director of Operations at the CID headquarters in Accra, said police in the Central Region first received information that four children had been trafficked to the Afram Plains in the Eastern Region from the Central Region.
When a team of personnel from the Anti Human Trafficking Unit got to the Afram Plains where the children were said to have been sent, they discovered that the children had been re-sold to another slave master and had been sent to Kpando –Torkor in the Volta Region.
On July 13, 2016, the team again proceeded to Torkor and together with other stakeholders, including the Ghana Navy and Challenging Heights, they were able to locate an island called Biobio where the victims had been sent by their masters to work as fisher boys.
According to Chief Superintendent Mawusi, the four children, together with another boy who was only nine years old, were rescued but their slave master absconded.
Information gathered by the police indicated that the nine-year-old boy who is the youngest of the victims trafficked, was also brought from the Central Region to Fanti–Kope, near Biobio, when he was only two years old.
The police are yet to locate his parents.
Meanwhile, the four boys, the police gathered, were sold to a slave master five years ago by their father who is an ex-convict, and were sent to Yeji and Krachie, all in the Volta Region, to work before they were recently re-sold to another slave master at Biobio by their old master.
On Thursday, July 14, 2016, the police again received information that a 25-year-old girl had been trafficked to Saudi Arabia and was being sexually abused and tortured.
Investigations led to the arrest of Kweku Arkoh, an agent who allegedly sold out the victim to her slave master in the Arabian country.
He was arrested at Akim Asene in the Eastern Region Friday morning.
A search conducted in his apartment led to the discovery of several birth certificates, passports and other travelling documents belonging to other victims.
Parents of the victim have been contacted and efforts have been made to get the victim sent back to Ghana.
The matter is still being investigated.
By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey