Participants after the programme
A five day cascading training workshop on combating
Trafficking in Persons for Officers of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has
opened in Accra.
A total of 40 Officers drawn from the National Headquarters
and 18 Regional Commands of the GIS are participating in the workshop to
enhance their skills and knowledge in the prevention of human trafficking in
Ghana.
The workshop forms part of the Migration EU Expertise
(MIEUX) project which started two years ago and is funded by the European
Union, with International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) and
the GIS as the implementing agencies.
Explaining the rationale behind the project, a former Chief
Immigration Officer at the United Kingdom (UK) Border Agency, Mr. John Linehan,
who is a Border Management consultant to the project said, the overall
objective of the MIEUX project was to enhance the capacity of Officers to
identify victims of human trafficking as well as perpetrators.
According to Mr. Linehan, a training manual on combating
Trafficking in Persons has been developed which he said would be integrated
into the training curriculum of the GIS. “The Technical Working Group of the
project which includes Officers of GIS assisted in its development”, he stated.
He also added that trainers in Trafficking in Persons at the GIS have been
equipped to provide training and capacity-building to personnel in accordance
with international best practices.
IMMIGRATION
SERVICE STEP UP EFFORTS TO COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING – ADD 1
The Head of Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation
Department at the National Headquarters of GIS, Chief Superintendent of
Immigration (CSI) Thomas Ewuntomah, who spoke on behalf of the
Comptroller-General of Immigration, indicated that human trafficking had
assumed critical dimension which required concerted effort to combat it. “It is
for this reason that as a State Agency, we need to do everything possible to
combat it”, he said.
He made reference to the 2018 Trafficking in Persons report
by the United States Department of State that upgraded Ghana to the tier two in
the fight against human trafficking and noted that the success story could not
be trumpeted without the mention of GIS contribution in the fight against the
menace. “You will agree with me that the success story could not have been
without the role played by the GIS”, he said.
He expressed the Service’s appreciation to the sponsor and
the implementers of the project and said the Ghana Integrated Migration
Management Approach (GIMMA) and the MIEUX projects had over the years supported
the GIS in various capacities to fight cross border crime. “We should therefore
be consolidating the gains in all these projects to find a common front to
fight this canker”, he noted.
The MIEUX project over the two year period covered
activities such as assessment of training needs on Trafficking in Persons,
information exchange on detection, investigation and referral of victims of
Trafficking in Persons, development of training manual on combating Trafficking
in Persons and training of trainers on the training manual, among others.
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