7 children rescued from Lake Volta in 2 hours

General News of Saturday, June 8, 2019

Source: 3news.com

2019-06-08

In the space of just two hours, seven child laborers were rescued from their fishing captains in the Krachi West district of Lake Volta, in the Oti region.

It was an operation sponsored by the Center for Human Rights, Conflict and Peace, a human rights group of the University of Education, Winneba.

During a study trip to the district that gained notoriety as the main transit point for child trafficking and child labor, some of the working children aged 8 to 12 who were working were working unattended while others appeared to be severely malnourished.

This prompted the group to act and, with the support of PADCODEP, a local nongovernmental organization, they rescued seven of the children they found on the lake between 7:00 and 9:00.

But the rescue operation was not without struggle. All the children encountered, as well as their teachers, faced fierce resistance, claiming that they were in school but could not explain why they were engaged in fishing on Friday mornings.

One of them got on his knees crying and begging the team not to take him out of the fishery. The team then went to Ogetse, one of the island communities from which three of the seven rescued children came from, in an elementary school with a considerable number of teachers.

However, it turned out that most parents in the area gave priority to fishing prior to attending school in their area.

Human rights advocates believe that Ghana will not achieve most of the sustainable development goals unless pragmatic measures are taken to combat the widespread development of child trafficking and child labor.

They explain the exploitation of children; if they are unchecked, it will be difficult for the country to achieve SDGs 1, 2, 3, 4 and 8 that seek to avoid poverty, hunger, good health, quality education and good health. practice. jobs and economic growth.

The rescued children were taken to the Village of Life, a care home and an educational facility for rescued children, to begin a new life course with 98 other inmates.