Man, 60 arrested for child trafficking

Eric Akwesi Amponsah has been arrested by the police for allegedly attempting to traffic six children from the area to the Central Region upon a tip-off.

A passenger onboard an Accra bound Metro Mass bus at Kpassa in the Nkwanta North District of the Volta Region volunteered information to the police.

The 60-year-old suspect was arrested by the Kpassa Police last Friday.

Mr. Amponsah was arrested with six minors, three males and three females, aged between 10 and 17 years last Friday.

He was transferred to the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) of the Volta Regional Police Command in Ho.

He was interrogated and subsequently put before a Ho Circuit Court last Wednesday which remanded him into police custody to assist in further investigations.

Head of the Volta Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU), Detective Chief Inspector, Joseph Nakoja, who disclosed the arrest to DAILY GUIDE, revealed that Akwesi Amponsah, who is an indigene of Dunkwa-on-Offin in the Central Region, was going to give the children to interested cocoa farmers in the area.

According to Chief boss, Nakoja disclosed that he recruited five children in May and four children in early June.

“Eric Amponsah says he tells the parents that he is sending the children to Kumasi to work as shop attendants only for him to send them to Dunkwa-on-Offin Central Region, where they are engaged on cocoa farms and galamsey sites, with a promise of paying them GHC1,200 each at the end of the cocoa season, he said.

Chief Insp. Nakoja narrated that “when we interrogated him, he claimed that in May and early June, he recruited children from the same area. The first instance, he recruited five children and the second occasion, four children and they are all farming in Dunkwa-on-Offin, so this is the third time he has recruited these six children.”

He indicated that the nine children sent to Dunka-on-Offin earlier would be traced and returned to their parents.

Meanwhile, the six children rescued from Eric are being taken care of by the Police AHTU in Ho until the final determination of their fate.