A GNA Feature by Patience A. Gbeze
Accra, Dec. 30, GNA – Human trafficking and slavery has become an international problem affecting millions of people and a number of countries across the globe, particularly in Africa.
In Ghana, the canker is one of the biggest challenges facing the country at both national and transnational levels. There have been numerous incidents of trafficking and abuse both internally and externally.
Ghanaian migrants, particularly women and young girls are increasingly recruited through licensed and unlicensed recruitment agencies for domestic work in various countries.
Every year, more than thousands migrants leave the shores of Ghana to the Gulf countries in search of domestic jobs. Some of them, mostly women and young girls normally fall prey to dubious recruiting agencies with little or no training on information on destination countries.
Along the streets of Accra, every single space is clouded with fraudulent advertisements promising juicy job opportunities abroad, but most of these innocent migrants end up in prostitution and slavery and all manner of inhumane treatments.
These advertisements are also common on social media channels, such as Facebook and WhatsApp, which calls for measures to address in order to protect Ghanaian migrant workers.
According to the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), more than 2,000 women departed for work in the Middle East from September 2014 to January 2015.
Since then, more than 350 of them have returned, reporting inhumane working conditions and hours, physical, emotional and sexual exploitation and non-payment of salaries.
The 2014/2015 annual report by SEWA Foundation dubbed: “Rescuing Enslaved Ghanaians in The Gulf States,” revealed that there are hundreds of Ghanaians girls stranded in Kuwait. Most of them have hidden themselves in rooms in a town called Mahboula.
These girls are house helps who have been influenced, with promises of better jobs, to run away from their employers.