ILO spends ?2.3bn cedis to fight child trafficking

Tamale, Nov.01, GNA - The International Labour Organisation (ILO) under its Anti-Child Trafficking project is spending 240,000 dollars (about 2.3 billion cedis) to fight child trafficking in five districts within the Northern and Upper East Regions. The districts are, Tolon/Kumbungu, Savelugu/Nanton and West Gonja in the Northern Region, Kassena Nankana and Bongo districts in the Upper East Region.

The project is to provide guidance and counselling to children who are at risk to drop out of school and prone to child trafficking to stay in school.

Mr. Nelson Sulemana Nyadia, Deputy Programme Manager of Regional Advisory Information and Network Systems (RAINS), ILO collaborators in the project told the GNA in an interview in Tamale on Tuesday after launching the project in the districts.

The Deputy Programme Manager said child trafficking was a global issue with worse incidents taking place in the Northern regions of Ghana, therefore, ILO/IPEC would continue to fight for the over 200,000 children being trafficked within the West African sub-region. He said a survey by ILO/IPEC indicated that over 1.5 million children within the Northern and Upper East regions were working while attending school and if nothing were done about the situation, the children would drop out of school.

Mr. Nyadia said apart from the social and academic support for about 2,500 children in each of the selected districts there would also be an awareness creation for community members to see the essence of allowing their children to remain in school. He said ILO/IPEC would also organize capacity building workshops for teachers who would be teaching in the project adopted schools as well as providing free uniforms, text books and organize remedial classes for the children to catch-up with their counterparts. Mr. Nyadia therefore, called on NGOs, community leaders and religious leaders to help stop child trafficking in the country to ensure that all children were in school.