Parliamentarians have called on state agencies to better collaborate to fight child trafficking and misrepresentations leading to falsehood.
Members of Parliament spoke against the criminality when two Members of Parliament, Betty Krosby Mensah, MP for Afram Plains North and Davis Opoku Ansah, Mpraeso MP presented a statement on the floor of Parliament.
Madam Krosby said the modus operandi employed by some non-government organisations (NGOs) in conducting their research and rounding up people in villages must be condemned.
She further called for a legal regime to deal with the situation.
Mr Ansah emphasised collaboration between state agencies was vital to clamp down on the menace.
Their comments come on the back of a case of child trafficking that came to light during an investigation into an NGO, International Justice Mission’s (IJM) Operation Hilltop, which occurred in 2019.
A documentary by BBC Africa Eye revealed the rescue mission in the Northern region of Ghana rather seemed to be a camouflage operation to cover child trafficking activities, where children are reportedly taken away from their parents.
A girl revealed in the documentary that she was taken from her family while her mother was held at gunpoint.
However, IJM has contended that portions of the BBC documentary have factual and material inaccuracies about their institution’s operations.
The Country Director, Anita Budu, has insisted that they followed due process and that the negative narratives on their operation may be driven by the “human face given to the situation in terms of feelings, emotions and sentiments.”
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