Samuel Agbewode
16 December 2008
Ho — A Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) working in the areas of rescuing trafficked children at Kete-Krachi, Partners in Community Development Programmes (PACODEP), has embarked on a monitory programme, to ascertain how the children were doing in communities where such children had been reunited with their parents.
As a result, a monitoring team from PACODEP visited schools which the children were attending at Asutsuare, Battor, Sogakope, Sokpui, Sege-Koni, Dzotokoe and Old Ningo, all in the Volta and Greater Accra regions, where the children were seen doing well in their respective classrooms.
The Executive Director of PACODEP, Mr. George Achibrah, told Volta File, at Sogakope during a visit to some of the children in schools in the area, that the exercise formed part of the organisation's responsibility to ensure that after reuniting the children with their parents, they lived normal lives, just like other children in the country, hence the monitoring exercise.
He commended Geneva Global, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM, for their continuous support to ensure that child trafficking was eliminated or reduced, noting that the two organisations had so far provided GH¢2,500, to support the parents of the trafficked children to engage in business activities, to enable them look after the children.
Mr. Achibrah continued that the team was satisfied with the current state of the children, as all of them were in school, which he pointed out was the objective of PACODEP, noting that to ensure a bright future for the country, equal opportunities needed to be created for all children of school going age, to have access to education.
He said the twenty rescued children, who were now in school in their respective communities, clearly indicated that when the conducive atmosphere was created for children, they could grow up to become responsible leaders, and called on individuals and organisations to support his organisation to fight against child trafficking, which, Mr. Achibrah pointed out, was a collective responsibility of all to ensure an orderly society.
Mr. Achibrah, at this point, reaffirmed his organisation's commitment to rescue more trafficked children in fishing communities across the country, adding that so far PACODEP had provided GH¢2,000 to the fishermen who released the trafficked children, which in a way served as motivation for people to willingly release children working with them, without necessarily being asked to do so.
A teacher at the Asutsuare Estate D. A. Primary School, Madam Doris Davordzi, said one of the trafficked and rescued children was doing well in class, but remarked that due to the difficulties he went through, he looked timid in class, and said the teachers were working hard to transform him.
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