4000 Trokosis still held in bondage - Pimpong

Accra (Greater Accra), 30 Nov. '98 - The Reverend Walter Pimpong, Executive Director of International Needs Ghana (ING), has stressed the need to liberate about 4,000 women still locked up in servitude at many shrines in the country in the name of Trokosi.

He was speaking at the first ever Trokosi Charity Fashion show jointly organised by ING and Lafayette Academy of modelling under the theme "Stepping into Freedom''.

It was sponsored by the National Population Council, Shell Ghana Limited, Ashfoam, GAR, GTV, GBC, Mirror, Graphic Showbiz, and Cubic Paging Systems Limited.

Rev Pimpong said the efforts of ING to liberate the young girls kept under strict surveillance of fetish priests were being complemented with the establishment of a Vocational Training Centre at Adidome in the Volta Region where the liberated girls are taught several vocational skills.

Mr Gordon Adomdza, Lafayette representative, said the academy is helping to organise Fashion Shows to raise funds in aid of the liberated Trokosis.

The School of Performing Arts of the University of Ghana, with some liberated trokosis, jointly performed a play entitled "A walk to freedom" which depicted the freeing of trokosis.

The young girls and women modelled their own designs made at the Training Centre while Charifred designs were modelled by students from Lafayette Modelling school.